Францияның еңбек одағы: CGT тарихы мен эволюциясы

French trade union center

The General Confederation of Labour (, CGT) is a national trade union center, founded in 1895 in the city of Limoges. It is the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions. It is the largest in terms of votes (32.1% at the 2002 professional election, 34.0% in the 2008 election), and second largest in terms of membership numbers. Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995–96 (it had more than doubled when François Mitterrand was elected president in 1981), before increasing today to between 700,000 and 720,000 members, slightly fewer than the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT). According to the historian M. Dreyfus, the direction of the CGT is slowly evolving, since the 1990s, during which it cut all organic links with the French Communist Party (PCF), in favour of a more moderate stance. The CGT is concentrating its attention, in particular since the 1995 general strikes, to trade unionism in the private sector.

Up until 1919 the CGT was dominated by anarcho syndicalist tendencies, with Émile Pouget as vice secretary and leader of the union from 1906 to 1909. The CGT was violently opposed to both the authorities and employers. Moreover, it refused to become affiliated with a political party. In 1906, the Amiens Charter (Charte d'Amiens) proclaimed the independence of this trade union. In 1909, members of the union management and hundreds of CGT members were killed by the French government led by Georges Clemenceau, who called the troops to open fire on the strikers.

Under the leadership of Léon Jouhaux, the Confederation joined the "sacred union" to not call work stoppages during World War I, which provoked the CGT's first internal division. Such labor stoppages were a point of contention within the European political left of the era. While Jouhaux tried to associate the CGT with the authorities, his opponents criticized the pervasive air of nationalism and the preference for struggle with the German proletarians rather than the French employers. They welcomed news of the 1917 Russian October Revolution with hope. In 1919, Pierre Monatte created the Revolutionary Syndicalist Committees (Comités syndicalistes révolutionnaires) current inside the CGT, which opposed the trade union's collaboration with the government during the war; carried out in the name of the Union sacrée national bloc.

Following the Russian Revolution, the French labour movement became increasingly divided between revolutionaries who supported the Bolsheviks and strong action at home, and reformists who favoured moderation and re affiliation to the pre war Second International. One outcome of this division was the expulsion of the revolutionaries. Following the 1920 Tours Congress during which the majority of French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) members voted to accept Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's 21 Conditions, leading to the creation of the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC), the CGT also split. Radicals created the Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU), where communists initially cohabited with anarchists and revolutionary trade unionists.

In 1934, left wing parties united to counteract the far right "ligues". Two years later, the Popular Front won the 1936 legislative election. At the same time, the CGT and the CGTU were reunited. Benoît Frachon negotiated in June with employers and the Government for the 1936 Matignon Agreements. Nevertheless, the Communists were as a result of the German Soviet pact in 1939, then the CGT was dissolved by the Vichy government but it transformed itself into an organization in the Resistance. It became increasingly influenced by the French Communist Party.

After the ejection of the Communists from the government and the 1947 General Strike, a further split took place, this time involving the departure of the reformist Right, followed in 1948, when Léon Jouhaux founded Workers' Force (Force ouvrière or FO) with U. S. Central Intelligence Agency support
The FO criticized the Communist influence as being incompatible with the Charte d'Amiens; and they were generally socialist, some trotskyist, some anarchist. In order to preserve its unity, the Federation for National Education (Fédération de l'Education nationale or FEN) left the CGT but did not join the FO. The Communist Benoît Frachon became leader of the CGT.

Although the CGT was dominant in French trade unionism, it was isolated until 1966. At this moment, it chose to coordinate its actions with the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (Confédération française démocratique du travail or CFDT). During May 1968 in France, the CGT was criticized by the far left because its leader Georges Séguy had signed the Grenelle agreements with Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, it was assimilated as a betrayal of the revolution. In the 1970s, it supported the "Union of Left" (alliance between the French Communist Party (PCF), Socialist Party (PS) and Parti Radical de Gauche (PRG)). After the defeat of the 1978 legislative election, the alliance with the CFDT (who were more linked with the Socialist Party and turned right after the abandon of the "autogestion" (self rule) and class struggle) was broken.

The election of Henri Krasucki in 1982, followed by the resignation of the Communist ministers (Charles Fiterman, Marcel Rigout and Jack Ralite) two years later, after the substitution of Laurent Fabius as Prime minister to Pierre Mauroy, led to an initial radicalisation of the confederation. However, at the end of his term (1982–1992), Krasucki began to distance himself from the PCF. His successor, Louis Viannet, did the same, going as far as resigning from the political bureau of the party. Within the CGT branches in the region, there was however a growing wish for independence. A leader of CGT in French West Africa, Bassirou Guèye, promoted this idea. At a meeting of the Territorial Union of Trade Unions in Senegal and Mauritania, held in Dakar November 11–November 12, 1955, the majority of delegates voted for separation from the French CGT. A conference was held in Saint Louis on January 14–January 15, 1956 which formed the Confédération générale des travailleurs africains (CGTA), separating the parts of the West African CGT organizations from the French CGT. At the conference 50 out of 67 delegates had voted for separation. In Togo, CGT had 45,100 members in 1948 (65% of organized labour). By 1952 the number had decreased to 34,000 (46% of organized labour). CGT formed a branch in Madagascar in 1936.

On July 16, 2019 Phillipe Martinez, Secretary General of the CGT, announced that the union will support the week of climate action beginning on September 20, 2019.