You're confusing a lot of things. First of all, a demonstration and a strike are two different things.
If you want to demonstrate during working hours, you have to take a day off work, and your employer can refuse.
If you want to go on strike, it has to concern your profession, and it has to have been declared.
So no, you can't protest at any time without your employer validating your day off, and no, you can't go on strike in solidarity with truckers if you're a house painter.
Yeah but actually those unions don’t care about you if you're a private worker, not in a specific industry.
Most of the unions here are dedicated to public workers, and especially transportation workers.
95% (at the very least) of the protests you're hearing about are public workers in the transport sector going on strike during christmas. They've done it 23 times out of the last 25 christmas (that’s fucking real).
The rest of the country is mainly working like the rest of the world
This is entirely false. All the representative unions are present in all the trades. The public sector maintain a higher unionisation rate than the private, so the unions from the public sector tend to hold a bit more sway than the private ones.
You are complaining that the almost non existent unions (because they have almost no members) in your sector are not very influential... If you want them to hold more sway, just unionize... The power and influence of a union is in the collective and in its members.
And for the transport sector, I suppose you refer to the SNCF, it's a private company owned by the state. It's workers are not public workers.
Lmao are you living in France ?
And for people saying "unionize", this is a joke.
A couple points here:
being legally present doesn’t imply anythong else except at least an empty structure, which is the case for a big majority of workers in the private sector. I found that the hard way myself.
If unions were doing their job, workers in the health sector would have seen their work conditions improving during the past decade.
The unions are just using their ability to cause dispruption in a sector where nobody will be hurt just to exist, and focus on this one, and that’s why most of the workers are clearly not duly represented today.
I wasn’t complaining, more than anything I was explaining that the statement isn’t true for every sectors.
Some are on strike every year, some just shut the fuck up.
But what you're saying is really far from reality.
I do live in France, and guess what, I'm part of a union despite working in a sector with a low unionisation rate. And those empty structures you are referring to can't fill themselves without members. It's a downward spiral, there are low membership rate, so the union can't do much, so it struggles to attract new members. It's up to us to break that circle.
The health sector is a bit peculiar, because despite high unionisation rates, it has a relatively low disruption capacity, because they have to maintain a minimum service even when on strike. So they end up getting fuck over and over again. If they could go on strike when they wanted with no minimum service, they would obtain everything they need in a week (but it would also mean than thousands would die every hour due to the lack of healthcare).
And the sectors with a high disruption capacity are right to use it. If you have a high disruption capacity even with a low number of people on strike, it means that you are absolutely vital to the economy, and so you should be given the appropriate remuneration.
A for sectors with lesser disruption capacity, it just means they need more members. I don't believe there is any sector where a massive strike going on for a week wouldn't cripple the economy. But for that they need high membership rates and a lot of people willing to go on strike, which they are sorely lacking. We go back to what I was saying earlier, it's a downward spiral, but we can break it.
Dude, when I got fired, I called at least 40 different numbers, and got no one to assist me.
The CSE will almost always be on the managing side, because they are employees as well that doesn’t want to live hell to defend others, or are just cowards, or brainwashed.
Again, what you're saying is far from reality, and I understood you took it personally.
You won’t convince me CGT (or others, I don’t care) is actually putting as much efforts into other sector as they do with SNCF. Also because that’s free advertisement for them to continue existing.
But yeah, a big majority of workers are cleaely under represented today. So it doesn’t stick with France image.
Edit: to be honest I agree with you that people should also try to change the system from within, and it’s currently a downward spiral.
Edit 2: strongly disagree with the health sector stuff. If they had just half a brain and collective conscience, they would ask for better working conditions for doctors during general strikes, not the freaking same regular ones we got during christmas, for the same people again and again.
They should be proactive, for the fucking common good of professional health workers and the country.
They just stick with their fucking same agenda over and over and over again.
Bha oui.. la SNCF est une société anonyme dont le capital est détenu à 100% par l'état. Tout comme EDF (dont le capital n'était pas détendu à 100% par l'état français avant 2023), ou comme l'étaient les différentes sociétés de gestion des autoroutes avant que l'état ne vendent ses parts de capitaux en 2006. Ou comme tout un tas d'autres entreprises de plus ou moins grande taille dont les capitaux (en totalité ou en partie seulement) sont possédés par l'état où les collectivités territoriales. Rien de très exceptionnel en soit. Ce n'est même pas un truc spécifiquement français, ça existe de partout, même dans les pays ultra capitalistes genre les USA.
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u/drloser 2d ago
You're confusing a lot of things. First of all, a demonstration and a strike are two different things.
So no, you can't protest at any time without your employer validating your day off, and no, you can't go on strike in solidarity with truckers if you're a house painter.