“It would take more union members,” said Philippe Martinez, the former secretary general of the CGT

This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the interview above. Click on the video to watch it in full.

France Télévisions: Good evening Philippe Martinez, former secretary general of the CGT. You publish My Tour de Gaulle At Plon editions. While a new mobilization is scheduled for Thursday October 2 in France, unions are not necessarily in a position of strength in discussions with employers or with governments. Doesn’t that help have French employees who are so little unionized?

Philippe Martinez: It is sure that it would take more union members, but there are differences in unionism according to the countries where we are. In Sweden, for example, some union members have discounts on the payment of their electricity. Today, in many companies, you end up with employees who have different collective conventions, because the world of work has been broken down, there is a lot of subcontracting, etc. To unify it, it’s complicated.

Those who say that we are not representative: there are more members in each of our two unions (CGT, CFDT) than in all political parties. And no one says they are not representative. When there are demonstrations, those that will take place Thursday October 2 or the 2023 pension movement, everyone said it was a revival of unionism. We were popular, much more than Macron.

France Télévisions: You are talking about the event on Thursday October 2, a drop in the last of 30 %participation is announced.

Philippe Martinez: I don’t know, I’m less involved. I am retired. I am less at the heart of the debate, of the discussion.

France Télévisions: The CGT rather gives event points rather than a total amount of demonstrators. How do you judge the evolution of the CGT? It’s been a while now that the CFDT is the first union in the private sector and that the CGT undergoes a small erosion.

Philippe Martinez: I think there are two aspects. I think you have to go faster in taking into account the diversity of the world of work. The world of work is much more diverse than when there were large boxes. I was hired at Renault in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), there were more than 20,000 employees, from the worker on a chain to the security guard, to the gardener, we all had the same status. So, this diversity must be taken into account. There are new professions, new forms of work, like Uber, etc. These are professions that emerge, which have no status, we must take care of it. And then, it’s a fact, the CFDT is located in more companies than the CGT. And inevitably, the effectiveness of the union, we see it in contact with the delegate or the delegate that we know and meet every day.