SUD trade unions: the new organisations trying to conquer the French trade union scene.

In France, over the last ten years or so, the grand compromises that were supposed to have enabled the building of an efficient system of social redistribution for retirement, healthcare and unemployment benefit have been seriously questioned. Added to this refondation sociale (social remodelling), according to the term used by MEDEF, the main French employers' organisation, is the planned or current privatisation of public network services that were previously nationalised (energy and rail companies), or that were part of the civil service (the Post Office and tele-communications), which had helped in the rebuilding of the country after the end of the Second World War, and which contributed to the economic success and cohesion of the country.

These current changes are often presented as being inevitable, given a European and world economic context that requires budgetary rigour and freedom to do business. The trade union movement is faced with questions from multiple sources on its capacity to produce the compromises that, today, will be the equivalent of those that allowed the consolidation of public services, and of the social redistribution system. These questions are even more important when placed in the current trade union context of deep division. While there are five 'representative' trade union organisations in France that have an official place in the management of welfare organisations--the CFDT, the CFTC, the CGT, the CGT-FO, and the CFE-CGC newcomers are also appearing. They come either from existing organisations the SUB trade unions ('Solidaires, Unitaires, Democratiques'), which are the subject of this article, or the FSU (Federation Syndicale Unitaire), which was created in 1993 following the implosion of the FEN (Federation de l'Education Nationale) one year previously; or they have come about from the joining of non-affiliated forces, and take the form of vocational interprofessional organisations--the Union Nationale Groupe des Dix, which was formally constituted in 1998 but has existed since 1981 (Denis, 2001), and the UNSA (Union Nationale des Syndicats Autonomes), set up in 1993.

The first in a series, the SUD-PTT was founded in 1988 by militants excluded from the CFDT executive (Damesin & Denis, 2001). Their exclusion was a result of their involvement in an internal conflict in their sector against the wishes of their congress; and secondly, of having supported--again, in conflict with their union superiors--the different movements in France at the end of the 1980s, which involved teachers, nurses, train drivers, employees from the SNECMA and Air France, etc. (Denis, 1996).

Contrary to expectations, this new federation succeeded in penetrating the postal and telecommunications sector, growing rapidly, which was rather atypical given the stagnated state of French unions. Its membership grew from 1,843 in 1990 to 5,847 in 1995, reaching 12,317 in 1999 (SUD statistics). At France Telecom, its percentage rose from 5.9 per cent in 1989 to 28 per cent in 2000, and at the Post Office it grew from 4.5 per cent in 1989 to 18.7 per cent in 2000--figures which make it the second-largest trade union organisation in these two companies. Mainly rooted in the Ile-de-France region at the outset (in 1990, its membership from outside the Paris region only made up 21.4 per cent of its total number of members), SUD-PTT has expanded and now has a presence in virtually all of the country's departements, including those which are overseas. SUD-PTT has become a model for the other emerging forces that, especially since the large strikes of November and December 1995, have grouped together under its banner. In 2001, there were nearly fifty SUP trade unions of varying size and importance, the most important being, according to SUD-PTT, SUD Sante Sociaux (8,000 members), SUD-Rail (5,000 members), and SUD-Education (2,500 members).

This new situation poses important questions for the main players in the 'system' of industrial relations, but also for those whose job it is to analyse them. Is the growth of trade union pluralism in France infinite? What values and practices are specifically used by SUD to give it such rapid growth in membership? Could the development of new trade unions, on its own, bring into question the overall functioning of industrial relations in France? In other words, what is the specific nature of SUD trade unionism, and how does it position itself with regard to its members, other trade unions, and to society as a whole?

Three levels of analysis are generally used to categorise trade union activity; three levels of analysis that bring up three opposing points of view. The first of these looks at the positioning of trade unionism, and compares the kind of trade unionism that is limited to the representation of employees with trade unionism oriented towards organisation with a more social vocation.

Taking this analysis further, a complimentary opposition is often noticeable between, on the one hand, corporate trade unionism, based solely on the interests of employees in the same trade and belonging to the same company; and trade unions that are open to interprofessional activity. In these two types of contrasting positions--trade union movement/ social movement and corporatism/interindustrial relations--a closed system is set against an open system, being focused on specificities, singularities and special interests. It is also set against a more open view of society, of the diversity that constitutes it, and of the varied nature of the stakes.

The second level of analysis looks at the role of trade unions, contrasting trade unionism based on negotiation and on accompanying change with trade unionism based on conflict and tests of strength. With this type of opposition, we can see the development of the differences between an action of 'retraining' and a 'revolutionary' action. The 'retraining' action requires participation: it is by proposing and accepting the compromises that represented employees can hope to see part of their demands fulfilled. Revolutionary action is without concession; it does not even take into consideration the possibility of coming to an agreement (even slight) with the opposing side, and looks to radically modify the rules of the game that regulate the relationships between employers and employees.

The last of the three levels of analysis looks at how trade unions work. A bureaucratic and centralised trade unionism would be in opposition to a grassroots trade unionism. The first modus operandi would be in a 'top-bottom' format: it is the rules drawn up by the top or by the centre that flow downwards, and are put into practice by the activists. The second modus operandi would be in a 'bottom-up' format: local action, in the workplace or in a limited area, produces rules that the people at the summit merely have to formalise.

Open versus closed; negotiation versus conflict; centralisation versus grassroots. These different levels of opposition are not just typical ideals produced by research into trade unionism and trade union habits. They are also used by trade union members themselves, who participate in the construction of their own categorisation.

Thus, for example, today the CFDT comes across as a trade union that looks towards negotiation, setting itself apart from trade union practices that are conflictual and sometimes violent. Do certain independent trade unions (like the FGAAC at the SNCF) assert their right to only consider the interests of their members and the specific trade carried out by their members?

How about the SUD trade unions? Can they be put into one of these boxes so easily? The general hypothesis of what follows is that using these classical opposing positions for the analysis of industrial relations and trade union action is not the best method of understanding the emergence of SUD. On first impressions, this trade unionism could be considered as corporatist (it is mainly growing in companies and, more specifically, in those in the public sector), conflictual (it strongly favours tests of strength and prefers policies that split the interests of staff and the interests of employers), and grassroots (they give priority to a modus operandi that is based solely on local actions and decentralised decision-making processes within the trade union organisation).

First, we will carefully analyse the trade union practices of the sup unions inside companies. Second, we will look at their interprofessional commitments. We are aware that limiting our analysis of the phenomenon of the SUD trade unions, in these two strands of our investigation, to the kind of quick categorisation outlined above is not sufficient. However, in a context strongly marked by economic liberalism and the questioning of the founding compromises, it is, indeed, on the heuristic character of these oppositions themselves that we propose to concentrate.

Dealing with transformation in the public sector

The creation of the SUD trade unions happened at a time when the division and organisation of work were being considerably transformed in public companies. Here, we will be looking specifically at the cases of the companies France Telecom, La Poste and the SNCF, where SUD's development was important and precocious: the SUD-PTT federation (La Poste and France Telecom) was the very first to be formed, and the SUD Rail federation was the second.

In the three public companies concerned, the place of public services within overall activity has been redefined. Adapting to the market has become a central theme of management action. Approaching the client from a commercial point of view has superseded taking care of the user (Jeannot, 1998). The outlines of the job definitions for the employees of the three companies have been redrawn to include new classifications, a new approach to the public-service user, and new methods of personnel management, in which merit-based promotion increasingly replaces promotion through seniority.

SUD PTT and SUB Rail rejected these reforms. The two federations have a traditional point of view concerning the French model of public service, in which:

* the preservation of company unity and the rejection of the quest for profits on public services are two indissociable demands;

* the public service is identified by the activity that is being carried out by the company as a whole (La Poste, France Telecom or SNCF), no matter what the work of specific employees or departments involves;

* the status of 'civil servant' or 'railwayman' is defended as being fundamentally necessary in order for the work of the public sector company to be carried out.

The denunciation of any process of internal differentiation within France Telecom, La Poste or the SNCF (different regulations for staff and different regulations for companies in the same public group), is accompanied by non-cooperative trade union action characterised by the rejection of any compromise with the directors. We will describe the main traits of this practice, before underlining its limits in the face of the growing transformations taking place in the public sector.

Original stance: non-cooperative trade union practices

At La Poste, France Telecom and the SNCF, industrial relations are 'supervised' by councils, in which directors and staff representatives have equal say. These are debating and consulting (but not decision-making or negotiation) chambers concerned with the application of the official status of personnel. The consultation of councils with regard to status allows the recognition of the singularity of the social body of each company (Amadieu & Chambron, 1994). In the same way, since the middle of the 1980S for the SNCF, and since the beginning of the 1990S for La Poste and France Telecom, negotiation has become the main means of producing reforms in these companies.

The SUD-PTT and SUP Rail congresses have based their critique of the other trade union organisations on the question of such practices, and notably the support given to negotiation by some of them. They regularly portray themselves as being beyond any possible compromise. We will call this 'outsider' trade unionism, as defined by Howard S. Becker (1997, 1963), where the 'outsiders' are those who cannot be trusted to live according to the rules accepted by the group. The individual thus labelled does not accept the norm by which he is judged, nor the competence or the legitimacy of the person judging him, which thus reinforces the distance between them.

SUD-PTT and SUD Rail do not propose any 'political exchange' leading to the neutralisation of their (conflictual) resources in exchange for the prospect of a long-term gain for the employees that they represent (Pizzorno, 1978). Interactions with other players in the company do not result in compromises such as the signature of an agreement that commits both parties, nor the laying out of contracts for an agreement, or reciprocal acceptance of trade-offs. The two federations, in order to achieve the objectives they represent, prefer tests of strength around interests where it has been judged that no conciliation is possible, against people that they have designated as being from the opposing class. The first texts from their congress underline their reticence in coming to an agreement (SUD Rail), or to even to participate in negotiations (SUD-PTT).

However, to consider only this point of view would be to forget a precise point: the SUD federations and trade unions are also (and wish to remain) in the system of industrial relations ('insider'), since they take part in professional elections and get, as we have seen, high scores. Several reasons have motivated SUD-PTT and SUD Rail to pursue this direction:

* The high number of votes they win allows them to be considered as representative in the company. The federations can take part in negotiations and discussions brought about by the directors, in order to denounce the form and the content, and can demand to meet the directors.

* The scores achieved in elections allow the allocation of means to trade unions, which pass on a share to their federation. The substantial allocation of delegate hours, the secondment of activists to permanent union activities, and a budget all serve to stabilise the trade union structures.

* The representivity gives them a legitimate position in the system of industrial relations from which to defend employees.

The system of industrial relations in the public sector in France pushes the sub trade union federations to adhere to the system in order to be able to contest it, and possibly to contribute to its change. The declaration of representivity, necessary for the obtainment of operating means, brings about the institutionalisation of trade unions, and simultaneously brings about their capacity to legitimately criticise the institutionalisation of trade unionism in the system of industrial relations. The use of this double outsider/insider position allows non-cooperative trade union practices.

The electoral results show the regular growth of the two federations in the three public companies. Taking the wishes of the employees into consideration could be carried out while remaining consistent with, on the one hand, the principles of action upheld by the union, and on the other hand, more general demands concerning the place of public services in society. However, in recent years, the opening up to competition (planned or already carried out) of the monopolies that France Telecom, La Poste and the SNCF held, has redefined the scope available to trade unionism, in terms of the competing companies and employees and the new possibilities for action inherent in that.

Competition in the public sector: A new factor for trade unionism

The SUD unions are not very common in the private sector in general. That they are established specifically in the public sector can mainly be explained by two reasons. First, overall, French trade unionism is far more present in the public sector than in the private sector. The restructuring of large industrial companies in the 1970s contributed to the decline in trade unionism in the private sector, which had been essentially concentrated in these large companies. Second, the wide reforms pursued in the public sector, and notably in public companies providing public services, over the last twenty years have not resulted in redundancies but more often than not in reorganisation; restructuring that has periodically created protest movements among the employees.

Sometimes these employees have lost faith in trade union organisations. The development of workers' groups outside the traditional forms of representation in the middle of the 1980s (Denis, 1996) clearly illustrates this wariness with regard to institutionalised forms for the defence of their interests. At the same time, whatever the shape of these movements, there is relatively constant protest activity in the public sector. Finally, the context of guaranteed employment and the maintenance of conflict are more favourable for the emergence of new trade unions than in the context of a private company, where economic survival and job security are not guaranteed.

However, we will see that the opening up of public service monopolies in the European Union will have the effect of developing competition between companies and, as an extension, between employees, both of which are favourable to the development of SUD in private companies. In this context, the demands made by SUD-PTT and SUD Rail, as highlighted above--public-service company unity and preservation of the unique status of employees--only concern a small part of the sectors concerned.

Competing companies are more and more present in the sectors of telecommunications, express transport and, to a lesser extent, rail. The development of France Telecom, La Poste and the SNCF is now happening with the help of subsidiaries, where the staff do not have the same status as those in the main company (Damesin, 2001b). At France Telecom, SUD signed an agreement instituting the creation of a group committee.

In the main subsidiary of the group, Orange, it signed an agreement on trade union rights. In groups with an ever-changing social structure (due to the growth of contract employees in head offices and the multiplication of subsidiaries and collective labour agreements), the SUD-PTT congress must deal with the growing diversity of the interests that it wants to represent. When competition between employees increases, other social norms are constructed, such as a collective labour agreement for the telecommunications sector. New staff can be drawn into the trade unions in private companies (Damesin, 2001a).

The expansion of the area of trade unionisation into the private sector has, however, been confronted by legal problems and identity problems. When a union does not belong to a congress that has been declared representative on a national level, its existence in the company can be legally contested by the company's directors. The union must then prove its representivity to a judge, notably by proving the size of its membership and the actions undertaken on its behalf.

On top of this legal obstacle, it must be added that even if SUD-PTT and SUD Rail have refused to be called 'company trade unions', the mobilisation of staff remains centred mainly around the full-time employees of the large public companies France Telecom, La Poste and the SNCF. Finally, non-cooperative trade union action has today been shown to have its limits. When a SUD union is created in the private sector, can it categorically refuse to sign agreements? Is it possible to demand the spreading of public status or the improvement of private status for all employees in the postal, telecommunications and rail sectors, without making compromises?

The methods used by the SUD federations are progressively adapting to these new questions. However, given the specific nature of the opening up of each monopoly to free-market competition, the answers given by the unions are not unequivocal.

The modification of methods is well under way at SUD-PTT, as far as telecommunications are concerned. A collective labour agreement is being built around new references for professional identities, which are no longer produced solely within the boundaries of one single company, France Telecom. SUD is now getting involved in private telecommunications companies. A similar process, though more limited, is in progress at the SUD Rail federation. It is trying to unionise the employees of subsidiaries of the SNCF, and subcontractors. But in today's context of a competition that is essentially intermodal (between different modes of transport), the demands are not based on the creation of new welfare standards but on the preservation of old welfare standards, specifically the status of train drivers. For the activists in the postal sector of the SUD-PTT federation, competition between employees is still a secondary factor because, although still inexistent for letters, it has always existed in the sectors of express transport and financial activity.

Faced with the diversity of these activities, the objective is to obtain an equality of treatment between contract workers ruled by private law and civil servants in the public establishment that is La Poste. The union has little representation in the subsidiaries of La Poste. The recent proposals for modification of the postal directive could bring about this monopoly being questioned, and thus change the position of SUD-PTT.

In public companies themselves, the themes proposed for negotiation by the directors of the companies are, today, more and more numerous (Damesin, 2003). It is sometimes difficult for the agreements to be applied, but the content covers some important issues, notably on careers and employment. The coherence between the ideological principles of the congress (going as far as refusing to negotiate) and the expectations of the employees that they represent (who might agree with the content of the negotiations) is difficult to maintain. At La Poste, the agreement on the Plan for Reduction in Work Time, of 17 February 1999, was not signed by the SUB PTT congress. But locally, its unions signed several hundred agreements that were favourable for employment volume and the improvement of working conditions. Recently, the federation has signed an agreement giving a right to paternal leave that is more favourable to postal workers on short-term contracts than is provided for by the law. At the SNCF, SUD signed an agreement that committed them to thinking about the remodelling of the system of classification within the company.

The SUD unions were created at a time when the stakes were trade union practices, and developed on a basis of criticising the institutionalisation of negotiation and that which they considered to be its consequences: an institutionalised trade unionism that no longer listens to the grassroots. But when the expectations of personnel converge with the proposals of the directors, approved by the unions, a non-cooperative attitude (the refusal of any negotiation) is difficult to uphold.

As we have highlighted above, this is compounded by the fact that the future legitimacy of the federations in the three activities concerned (telecommunications, post and rail) will, as time goes by, no longer be based on union action within companies, centred around the defence of public service, but on sector-based action that takes into account the differences in employees' status.

It can be seen that the two opposite styles--grassroots versus centralisation; conflict versus negotiation--do not allow us to precisely label the actions of the SUD unions within companies. The priorities given to local decisions and to a bottom-up structure, as is often confirmed by SUD activists, are not put into practice so dogmatically and so naturally as that.

To not negotiate on principle is a position that is harder and harder to maintain when the potential contents of agreements are likely to interest 'the grassroots'. Taking care of staff with different statuses, which has been made necessary by the high growth in the number of contract workers in head offices and by the development of subsidiaries, is likely to create new conflicts of interest: to not demand the application of one status for all civil servants, and to sign agreements in favour of contracted employees, could further weaken the position of civil servants in the general economy of the sector in question. It demands stronger coordination from the 'centre'--from the federation--and thus the production of a doctrine common to all unions in the federation.

Trade unions search for new interprofessional practices

In order to understand the route taken by the SUD unions on the interprofessional level, two questions must have been answered beforehand. First, one must understand why SUP has put such great store in interindustrial relations; and then one must explain why the SUD unions have not grouped together in order to form one SUD federation or congress.

As we stated in the introduction, the leaders of the SUD unions have been involved, in the past, mainly in congresses. This model has shaped their behaviour and structured their practices to the point of appearing to be an identity that they could not (and would not) get rid of. The plunge into trade union autonomy that was brought about by their departure from the CFDT did not lead them to question this state of mind.

On the contrary: the mistrust, historical and cultural, felt towards autonomous trade unionism--for confederated militants, it is often associated with 'yellow' or management-led trade unionism led them to get involved, as soon as possible, in interprofessional and/or social actions. Mindful of the need to avoid any accusation of corporatism, these activists see it as a necessity to apply their trade union actions on a wider scale than that of the company or the sector in which they are established.

Furthermore, they want to promote an aggressive trade unionism based on tests of strength. This makes the interprofessional dimension imperative, and gives it its efficiency. A trade union organisation on its own does not have the forces necessary to bring about mass movements and to turn confrontation to its advantage and even less so when it is sector-based. From this follows the necessity to adhere to a larger trade union organisation.

Heirs of a congressional concept of trade union action, they nevertheless take a critical look at the way congresses work, if only because they have been excluded from them. This therefore obliges them to construct their interprofessional process differently, and to find alternative solutions to those already in existence in large organisations. This explains, at least in part, why the SUD unions have not--for the moment--made the decision to group together in one congress. Only in part; because such a constitution would also assume that the SUD unions form a coherent unit, with the same community spirit. Yet being under the SUD banner and part of a growing trade union presence does not automatically mean homogeneity and the sharing of interests.

Amongst other factors, the unions were not born under the same conditions and at the same time; they are in different professional sectors of activity, and are therefore confronted with specific realities; and they want to have interindustrial relations directly, without them being managed, as in the congresses, by central activists. This group of considerations led the SUB unions to manage their interprofessional projects by relying on two joint processes.

The decision to participate in the drawing up of a new interprofessional pole

The first of these two processes consists of participating in the construction of one of the two inter-federal poles that have been growing since the end of the 1980s, as alternative forces to the five congresses. SUD-PTT thus allied itself to the Union Syndicale--Groupe des Dix ('GIO') in 1989. This alliance is interesting from several points of view:

* It brings together culturally different unions: the 'traditional' autonomous unions, generally formed from the internal breakdown in the CGT just after the Second World War; and the SUD unions, who mainly come from the CFDT.

* A new type of organisation appears, which is also a new form of association. They set themselves apart from 'classical' central congresses with the political autonomy that they give to each of their members--each one of whom is considered, within these interprofessional poles, as a moral person with full and total autonomy, who follows the trade union's methods of action and decision-making based on the principle of unanimity. By doing this, they also differentiate themselves from the tradition of associative federalism that is unique to French trade unionism.

Without any injunction coming from SUD-PTT on this subject, it does advise the unions that are under its banner to join it within the interprofessional pole. As a result, in 2001, out of the 32 member organisations of the GIO, 19 were SUB trade unions.

They now play a major role within this new trade union group. They have actively participated in its organisational makeup; in the drawing up of its internal operational regulations; and in the mutualisation of contributions, as well as in the drawing up of a federal platform for demands. But, above all, they have been enormously important in the territorial structuring of the GIO in that they have caused it to think more about its geographical development, which had been neglected before, via the creation of local structures. The objective pursued here by the SUD unions is to try and find an outlet for the tensions that stem from their long attachment to the congressional model.

At the same time, and in order to avoid making the same mistakes that led them to the crisis situation in which they still find themselves, they want to avoid reproducing the type of organisational functioning currently used by other trade unions.

To this end, they are trying to build what they called a 'reconfederal-isation from the bottom-up'. That is to say that they want to take interprofessional activities as a whole out of the centralised framework in which they are confined inside congresses, where they are mainly looked after by central services, in order to give these interpro-fessional activities a local and activist base.

For the moment, the results of such an operation are mixed. The GIO has had some success in its territorial setup--it is now present in around fifty departments--with the most militant of its activists running its local structures. The goal of making interprofessional activity an integral part of union activity, rather than merely an institutional aim, requires that members and employees take it up themselves. But given the sociological tendencies observed--whether they be expressed in terms of deunionisation, or of the growth of the phenomenon of delegation; in terms of disaffection with regard to collective commitment, or of the development of struggles within categories--this is far from being the case.

An idea of interprofessionalism based on organising as a social movement

The second path followed by the SUD activists concerning interprofessionalism consists of basing it around a social movement. This specific choice is motivated by two factors: first, organisation as a social movement allows tests of strength that are established in and by collective struggles. It is, therefore, the necessary condition for confrontational trade unionism. Second, it is here that interprofessional trade unionism takes place. For a union like SUD-PTT, which is present in a specific sector of activity, collective struggles, organised around employee or social themes, provide the opportunity to participate in extra-professional actions. Especially since interprofessionalism takes place, within collective mobilisation, without mediation, and notably without the trade union apparatus. Separated by the mechanism of representation, the body of employees and that of the trade unionists can come together again and be superimposed once more, as it was at the outset of trade unionism, when the community of workers and the community of trade unionists were consubstantially linked (Tixier, 1992).

It is easy to understand the essential role attributed to the social movement by SUP trade union militants, who were in any event the driving force: the activists in the age-range of forty to fifty-years-old make up the last generation to have been trained by and for collective action. Having joined the CFDT in the 1970s, they remained faithful to the principles of self-management and 'movementism' upheld by the CFDT at the time. From their beginnings in trade unionism, they never stopped making the social movement the foundation of their actions, going against changes in their leading body, and even at certain times during periods of reduced social conflict--going against changes in society itself. This credo explains the avant-garde position that they take up today in many areas of contemporary disagreement.

This position also comes from the very specific idea they have of the social movement. It is perceived as a 'group movement', in which union and associative forces intervene side-by-side. This liberalisation of activity is linked to several factors: to the success with which the associative phenomenon has met; to, at the same time, the decline of the trade union movement, which is no longer capable of leading social struggles on its own; and to the desire to not separate the social question--unemployment, exclusion, lack of security--from the employment question.

This important SUD aim of interprofessional action through social movement, like its aim to decentralise and deinstitutionalise interprofessional action, has not been fulfilled. To want to base social transformation on the social movement assumes that this exists, and that it has the capacity to weigh on the decisions taken or to be taken. Yet the least we can say is that social struggles do not have much impact today, in terms of force and quantity, in French society. The protagonists of collective action have noted it themselves. Not only is the social movement split and fragmented, but today it only brings together minor forces (Aguiton & Bensaid, 1997). We can therefore legitimately raise the question, not of the political choice that aims to base interprofessionalism on collective action and on the social movement, but of its operational validity, once again given the sociological tendencies in place.

Conclusion

In a rather simplifying, if common manner, we often have a tendency to represent the French trade union scene as being made up of two opposite poles: a reformist pole, made up of trade union organisations which favour institutionalised regulation, more inclined to negotiation and to accepting the principle of contractualisation (the CFDT, the CGC, the CFTC, and the CGT-FO from time to time); and a pole that favours combat and/or confrontation, which gives preference to conflict and tests of strength, to demanding rather than participating, and to action on the ground rather than in representative employee proceedings (the CGT and the SUD unions, mainly).

We use the same type of dual typology to differentiate between the unions themselves: one will be judged to be corporatist, and another judged to be interprofessional; the internal modus operandi of one will be considered an oligarchy, and the other as grassroots; the behaviour of one union will be perceived as cooperative, and that of another as conflictual, etc.

The study that we have carried out on the SUD unions shows that this bipolar conception of trade union organisations is very simplistic, if not false. In our opinion, it is not wholly appropriate to consider them using these opposing categories. It is certainly better to show that these categories operate as a couple, and that this union, say, distinguishes itself from another union by its more marked leaning to one side or the other of this pair.

Thus it would be hasty to perceive the SUD trade unions as corporatist for the sole reason that each of them is set up in a specific company or in a specific sector. It is specifically in order to compensate for this sector-based setup that it is trying to regroup itself around an interprofessional pole (l'Union-Syndicale Groupe des Dix), and is trying to carry out actions outside its immediate work-based sphere by getting involved in the social movement. It is also not exact to limit the repertoire of SUD trade unions' actions only to the mobilisation of groups; nor is it wholly correct to imply that they are never looking to find a seat in more institutionalised negotiations.

Their commitment is simply different because it is founded on, as we have tried to show, non-cooperative practices, as well as a desire to instrumentalise the proceedings in which they have to intervene in order to develop a test of strength. Also, the grassroots perception that we can have of the SUD trade unions cannot hide the essential role--in terms of organisation, consciousness and stimulation of struggles-and the fundamentally political role played by the apparatus of each one of them. Finally, one of the lessons--an unexpected lesson, in fact brought about by the development of these unions resides in the obligation of researchers to re-examine the methods by which they analyse the trade union movement, since it is now outside of the categories that they are used to using.

Within companies, where methods of welfare management and the reification of negotiation tend to denigrate all forms of social movement, and to give responsibility to the individual--or make the individual feel guilty--the SUD unions have built their identity around group conflict as well as around their rejection and mistrust of the instituted regulations. Their choice has paid off, as demonstrated by the position they occupy in the sectors and companies that they are in, and as their electoral results show. In companies, the position of the SUD unions is in part linked to the dramatic changes that have taken place in the public sector over the past few years. Faced with reforms, these unions have managed to attract the employees who opposed them as well as a section of those who were unsure. They have pulled them together on the principle of defending public services.

Outside of the company context, by getting involved with the formation of the 'Groupe de Dix', the SUP unions ended the isolation that had been the reason for their departure from confederated structures. This anchor point allowed them to increase their capacity for action, and to raise it to a level that they could not have achieved individually.

However, SUB activists are now faced with three key problems. First, they have not succeeded in countering the changes in the public sector that they condemn. At present, they find themselves in a difficult situation, as much concerning the redeployment of their demands as in as the opening-up necessary in order for them to achieve representation in private companies (subsidiaries), and amongst new employees (who are governed by private law).

Second, on an interprofessional level, most of the work is yet to be done. The task is both multiple and immense, involving SUB establishing itself in the private sector, as well as developing the local structures of the GIO; achieving recognition of its representivity; and, above all, the drawing up of an interprofessional policy that goes beyond talk to become a real project.

Third, the project of building a trade unionism of paid-up members and of mobilisation requires a strong militant vein. But the SUB unions, like all the other union organisations, are now going through a period in which the relief troops are not coming through.

This problem is compounded by the fact that these unions are the fruit of a particular generation that modelled their shape and breathed life into their minds; will this generation find another one to which it can hand over the baton? The unions are now in a serious situation, for which they themselves are partly responsible. In order to combat the phenomena of institutionalisation and bureaucratisation that plague the cong-resses, the founding teams and directors of these new organisations--and those of SUD-PTT in particular-drew up a series of rules, including limiting the number of terms served and their accumulation, limiting the number of permanent staff, providing the possibility to remove delegates, and so on. Victims of the age limits that they set, the founding activists must give up their positions without their replacements being systematically assured.

Efficiency of action; coordination in the interprofessional field; replacing activists ... These very young organisations on the French union scene considerably shook up activist practices in the 1990S and at the beginning of the new century; but they will not be able to escape, finally, the classic set of problems that confronted their predecessors.

Appendix: Interprofessional structures in the French union landscape

For decades, two organisational models have dominated the French trade union movement:

* The congressional model. It is based on a double structure: a vertical structure coming from the congress of industries, and a horizontal structure coming from the interprofessional union over a geographical area. It is on this model that the five congresses deemed to be representative are based: the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT), the Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail (CFDT), the Confederation Generale du Travail- Force Ouvriere (CGT-FO), the Confederation Franeaise des Travailleurs Chretiens (CFTC) and the Confederation Generale des Cadres (CGC).

* The autonomous model. It has developed since the split between the CGT and the CGT-FO in 1947. Faced with this split, a number of unions refused to choose between the two options that were presented to them for the Communists to stay in the CGT, or for the reformists to join the CGT-FO--and opted for autonomy (Mouriaux, 1994). Since then, this model of autonomy has been used by a large number of organisations, of varying size and membership, either in the form of company or departmental unions or professional unions, essentially based in public services.

A new phenomenon is that since the 1980s a large number of these autonomous unions have chosen to regroup. This allows them to look at questions concerning inteprofessionalism which, up until that point, had only been the domain of congresses, but from another angle.

The option was neither to rejoin the existing congresses, nor to create a new one, but to build an alternative to the congressional model by proposing another form of association, action, and trade union expression. This regrouping created two 'intercongressional' poles:

L'Union Nationale des Syndicats Autonomes (National Union of Autonomous Unions)

The UNSA was set up in 1993 by five autonomous unions, including the Federation de l'Education Nationale (FEN) and the Federation Generale des Fonctionnaires (FGAF). It was recognised as being representative in the civil service in 1994, which allows it a presence on the board of the Conseil Superieur de la Fonction Publique (Superior Council for the Civil Service), and is now demanding to be recognised on a national level. In 1997 it benefited from the arrival of trade unionists from FO, who were in disagreement with the position of their central organisation; it declared that it had 365,000 members in 1998, and that it considered itself to be the third biggest union behind the CFDT and the CGT. It has developed a reformist-style trade unionism, and describes its philosophy as realistic and pragmatic.

L'Union Syndicale--Groupe des Dix (Group of Ten)

The Groupe des Dix was founded in December 1981 by ten autonomous unions of a 'progressive' leaning. After more than fifteen years of informal operation, it drew up statutes and officially became the 'Union Syndicale' during its first constitutive meeting, held in January 1998. Today it numbers around thirty union organisations, two-thirds of which are public sector, new autonomous unions (Syndicat National Unifie des Impots, Syndicat National des Journalistes, Syndicat Unifie des Caisses d'Epargne, and so on), and also includes most of the SUD unions. It represents 80,000 members and has 170,000 votes in professional elections. It distinguishes itself from the UNSA by its affirmation of more aggressive methods, and its inclination towards social movement unionism.

Written in September 2004

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