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Why labor protests in France won’t stop Macron’s reforms

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It’s been 50 years since the events of May 1968, when France went through a period of civil unrest, and one year since the election of centrist reformer Emmanuel Macron as president. The country is marking these anniversaries with a series of strikes, rallies and occupations in response to Macron’s economic agenda.

However, this time, things seem different.

For a start, despite the discontent in some sectors, the French economy is not doing too badly. Moreover, new technologies are helping cushion the effect of transport strikes by allowing people to work from home or share car rides. Finally, citizens — at least according to polls — remain supportive of the government’s effort to pass long-promised reforms. One year after Macron’s election, Le Monde writes that he “resists in opinion polls, despite fragilities.”

A second reason the demonstrations are unlikely to thwart Macron’s reforms is that labor unions themselves are also changing. French unions are, in terms of membership, as weak as those in the United States. Only 11% of the employees in France are members of a union (as compared with 10% in the U.S., 15% in Australia, 26% in Canada and 67% in Sweden), even less if one would focus only on the private sector.

What makes France’s unions different from the U.S. is that almost all workers are covered by an agreement at the sectoral level, setting wage floors and other basic rights. Thanks to the extension of private agreements to all workers and companies, labor unions are able to exert a much wider influence than their narrow membership would allow. In other words, though they don’t have many members, the deals they make apply to every worker in the industry.

Not surprisingly, Macron has put labor relations at the center of his reform efforts. He wants to make it harder for labor unions to extend collective agreements beyond those who signed them. Unions fear that these initiatives will threaten their dominance and lead to abuses by employers who have stronger bargaining power than employees.

Some observers believe these reforms could actually serve to improve and rejuvenate labor unions. Suffice to say, not all labor unions in France see it that way.Thus far, they have failed to disrupt things enough to force concessions from Macron. The next question will be whether they have the power to stop him from changing the way they themselves operate.

(Andrea Garnero is an economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. The opinions and arguments expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OECD or its member countries.)

The post Why labor protests in France won’t stop Macron’s reforms appeared first on BusinessDay : News you can trust.

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