The Contradictions of French Industrial Relations Reform

Abstract

In 1982-83 the French Socialist government passed a series of laws known collectively as the Auroux Laws, after the then minister of labor, Jean Auroux.' Their purpose was the wholesale reform of the French system of industrial relations. Collectively, the package of legislation aimed to strengthen trade unions, encourage collective bargaining, give new powers to works councils, allow workers to express themselves in their place of work, and regulate the day-to-day functioning of social relations inside the firm. The reforms were directed at both the public and the private sector. The Auroux Laws constituted a remarkably self-conscious and comprehensive effort to mold industrial relations (or what will be termed labor regulation2) in France. The Socialist experiment in industrial relations reform is interesting both for the scale of what was attempted (eventually one-third of the Labor Code was rewritten), and hence what it tells us about the ability of governments to carry out broad projects of social reform, and for its timing. In the period after 1973 the advanced capitalist economies experienced multiple economic shocks and prolonged recession. The initial reaction of most governments was to maintain or even reinforce the industrial relations system and to deal with the economic crisis by a combination of familiar macroeconomic policies. However, by the end of the 1970s there was a widespread perception that the crisis was structural rather than conjunctural and required a profound economic restructuring to rid sclerotic western economies of a wide range of rigidities which inhibited their capacity to respond rapidly and flexibly to a more competitive and quickly changing global economy. One of these rigidities was the industrial relations system itself. As a discourse of flexibility rapidly took hold of business and resurgent conservative parties, trade unions and the fragile postwar class compromise embodied in national industrial relations systems came under attack.3 This economic and social crisis did not spare France. Two oil shocks hit the energy-poor French economy hard, and after 1976 Prime Minister Raymond Barre began a somewhat half-hearted restructuring of an economy which had a widespread reputation for being highly dirigiste and rigid.4 However, in 1981 a Socialist government was elected, and its industrial relations project appeared to run counter to that of other states. In attempting to encourage collective bargaining and strengthen trade unions, the French Socialists were trying to create precisely the form of labor regulation which was being called into question or even dismantled elsewhere. The Socialists had a sophisticated economic rationale for the Auroux reforms, as the next section will demonstrate, and they had at their disposal a notoriously strong state for this ambitious project. The importance of the Auroux Laws in comparative perspective is that they provide an insight into particular national responses to broad economic pressures and the capacity of states to swim against the economic tide. In a period of profound economic restructuring and