From the Cold War to the Present Day: Labour Unions and the Crisis of ‘Models’

Abstract

That the Cold War deeply affected French trade unionism is undeniable. Its effects in the 1950s and 1960s were all the more obvious since they proceeded from a lasting historical situation related to the influence of the 1917 Russian Revolution on the French labour movement. But with the passing of time — from the start of the Cold War to the collapse of the Eastern bloc — the imprint of the Soviet model on the various union tendencies diminished in force, though it endured to varying degrees through the 1980s. With the thawing of international relations and the ‘peaceful coexistence’ that came about during the 1960s, the French labour movement — particularly its largest organisation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) — was inclined to search for new directions, whether in the form of a ‘specifically French socialist model’, Eurocommunism or the formation of a ‘Europe of Labour based on the dual principle of socialism and democracy’. Today, the implosion of Soviet-style communism and the failure of the French Left in the exercise of power from 1981 to 1993 have deeply unsettled labour union orientations and the place they might occupy in the new world order taking shape. In order to assess the current state of the labour movement, its current problems must be resituated in a historical perspective.KeywordsLabour MovementEuropean Economic CommunityClass StruggleSocialist PartyEastern BlocThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.