Le syndicalisme enseignant français et la grève: normes et normalisation d'une pratique (1948–1959)

Abstract

French teachers have the reputation of being very strike‐prone and usually compose the largest part of striking civil servants. This conflictual configuration is combined with a relatively high degree of union membership. If in an earlier period teacher unions had been quite timid in engaging in work interruptions, the attitudes towards strikes changed radically in the 1940s and 1950s. Since then, the powerful “Fédération de l'Education Nationale” (FEN), a federation of the major unions of all subgroups of the teaching profession, has taken up the habit of organising 24‐hour or 48‐hour strikes on an almost yearly basis. This article analyses the construction of these practices, and the conditions and modalities of this passage to a regulated and normalised strike among French teachers. This construction was not brought about without difficulties or polemics. Strike practices thus became an indicator of internal divisions, mirroring the officially recognised ideological tendencies within the FEN. Four strike types emerged in this context: limited work interruptions, global civil service strikes, exam strikes and finally political strikes. The FEN majority practices were marked by their reformist perspective, their ritualism and their prudent defence of teachers' interests, and were in clear contradiction with a more ambitious minority of the union that advocated more intense modes of collective action.