Anarchist Black Cat

I'm a bit confused in another thread a poster has referred on several occasions in a discussion about unions in France, to the Bourse du Treveil system of Labour councils, now all the sources I can find suggest that although these started out in the eighteen hundreds as a self organised workers council system, they are now fairly defunct and roughly equivalent to Trades Councils in the UK.

Now while I agree with his general point that union membership density maybe incredibly low in France, because people just vote for the candidates for rep and delegate positions from their favourite union, and that membership is pretty much restricted to activists, I thought the elections held every four years in France where for the Works councils in a similar system to Germany and Spain, not to self organised labour councils like the Bourse du Treveil.

Anyone got any links to some up to date English language sources on the French union and works council system?

Cheers.

The way I understand it, but I have never really look into the matter, the Bourse du travail is more of a labor community center paid for and owned by the municipality. Unions got space and subsidies in it in proportion to their respective share of the vote. (but then, many radical unions and some community groups manage to get space inside the Bouse du travail so there's some politics involved too not just the result of the vote)

Hmm, OK cheers, do they exist alongside state enforced company works councils? Or they instead? Or something else?

Anyone else?

I'm interested because at the moment in the UK, we have trades councils which are theoretically locally based councils of delegates from affiliated (mainstream) trade unions but in reality generally powerless lefty (Trotskyist and Stalinist), or Labour party controlled talking shops which no one except for them takes seriously with a few notable exceptions, but which could be turned into something more dynamic in my opinion if the more militant and active workplace union groups started sending delegates and actually doing things. In many areas they do actually own buildings and run unemployed workers' centres, and let space out to community and radical groups, but are in themselves fairly divorced from useful activity.

BTW union density in France is not as low as one would think. It depend what you count. In terms of due paying union members, it's really low (8%). But in terms of the number of people covered by a collective agreements, then it is really high (90%) because in France the bargaining is done at the industry level (with some 250 national contract out of a *total* of 528 for the whole country). Actually, there is at least one union active in 40% of all workplaces according to the latest survey of french workers.

As far as I know it's something else completely.

I read one academic report that said that while union membership in the private sector was just 5%, 95% of workers were covered by union in contacts in 2006.

situation in Spain is similar. as of 2003 75 percent of workers in Spain voted in elections to comites de empressa. these works councils are also the bargaining councils. since some workers do not vote, this implies that even more than 3/4 are covered by contracts negotiated thru the comites. actual union membership in Spain is 17 percent.

The Solfed position on Works Councils:
http://www.solfed.org.uk/docs/booklets/ ... ng-pan.htm

French CNT-AIT position:
http://cnt-ait.info/article.php3?id_article=145

Re the 1998 Solfed pamphlet above. It starts "Works Councils are coming to Britain...". Now I couldn't say whether that counts as optimism or pessimism, but either way, 11 years on and with Tories due back in power next year, I'd say that works councils are not coming to Britain or Ireland (we have the horror of "Social Partnership" instead) any day soon...

I think that Phebus has answered your main question about les Bourses. As a point of interest there are not one but three different types of union elections in France. The system is of Byzantine complexity, and the number of competing unions may be equally as complicated.
If You'd like a starting point I tried, to the best of my ability, to describe the system and the main unions in France in a commmentary last Sept 20 on the victory of the CNT-F in the metalworks elections. See Sept. 20, 2009 at Molly's Blog ( http://mollymew.blogspot.com ). It's in English, though the article commented on was translated from the French. It's sort of a "Beginners' Guide to French Unionism'. If I have made any mistakes in interpretation in said article Phebus would probably be able to correct them.

Cheers Molly, your article is the best English language explanation I have seen so far - I was getting frustrated enough looking to consider trying to read explanations in French

On a technical note (don't want to distract from the thread!) while your blog is generally one of the better anarchist news blogs in my opinion, why do you not put individual articles in their own posts on their own pages? It would make navigation a whole lot easier!

Sorry, I can't find the article on Molly's thingy. I realize ny eyesight is bad...what's the title and where's it located?

Exactly, you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the blog, look at the really faint archive list, click on September and scroll about halfway down a massive page to find it!

I have copied and pasted it (with full credits and links of course) here - unions, elections, and labour councils in France

Syndicalist...you stop playing with my "thingy" right now, or I'm going to tell on you to Auntie Em.
Eight Hour Day...That's a good idea. can you help me out here and give me an easy explanation about how to do this without losing the fact that several posts are visible to each vistor. I'm too lazy to try and plow through Blogger help to find the solution. I want visitors to browse down the page. Somewhere between 90 to 95% of the visters to Molly's Blog are not anarchists, and I'd like them to be able to spot other things about the idea that might take their fancy.
BTW I've visited your blog and found it quite good. I found that there were many links there that I could add to Molly's ever-expanding Links section, especially the Online Anarchist Libraries section. I'm still busy crawling through it.

i really don't understand what you're talking about pat.