Each week, Olivier Babeau deciphers the times for FigaroVox. He is president of the Sapiens Institute and, moreover, professor of management sciences at the University of Bordeaux. He recently published
The New Digital Disorder: How Digital Explodes Inequalities (Buchet Chastel, 2020).
We wouldn't talk so much about social dialogue in our country if it wasn't deeply ill.
The yellow vests crisis showed how much our country was suffering from the weakening of intermediary bodies capable of facilitating the expression of populations while channeling them.
The stake is thus not only economic, it is also political.
How can this long-awaited social dialogue be finally enabled?
First by formulating with lucidity the diagnosis of the problems of our unionism.
France is the country in Europe where the social partners have the fewest members but the most extensive powers: management of unemployment insurance, vocational training, pensions, etc.
The unionization rate is estimated at 11.2% active (8.7% in the private sector and 19.8% in the public service), compared to 30% in 1949. The European average is around by 23%.
In the Nordic countries, this rate is much higher: it reaches 74% in Finland or even 70% in Sweden.
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How to explain it?
By making the financing of trade unions independent of their number of members, our system has favored the emergence of federations that are not very concerned with their bases and oriented towards the defense of their own interests.
The Perruchot report (which the national representation, to its greatest dishonor, had wanted to hide from citizens), had shown the full extent of the abuses of particularly opaque funding.
France is the country in Europe where the social partners have the fewest members but the most extensive powers
By artificially freezing the weight of trade union centers in social dialogue, we encouraged their transformation into parapolitical bodies of protest, prevented healthy competition, broke any incentive for innovation and prohibited moving towards a model of service trade unionism as in northern countries.
The negotiations on teleworking, which risk setting crippling conditions for its development, show that the blockage is total.
What if the solution was to simply inject more democratic logic into a system that has been weaned off for too long?
The irrebuttable presumption of representativeness enjoyed by historic unions, which is akin to an annuity, should be called into question, in order to finally restore power to employees over their representation.
We must also put an end to the union monopoly in the first round of professional elections, which has existed since 1946 and which prohibits an employee from being able to stand outside any union organization.
This monopoly is no longer understood and maintains the current unions in their inaction.
Employees who build their own network and develop influence within the company, particularly with the help of digital tools, must be able to stand for election from the first round.
Funding for unions must be based on their performance.
A union check, replacing the current public funding (linked to the resources of the joint funds and to the funds of the Association for the management of the national joint fund financed by a portion of 0.016% of the payroll of companies) could be put in place. square.
Each active person would choose the structure to which he wishes to join.
The use of the digital corporate referendum could allow each employee to express themselves on various subjects
Unions, directly financed by employees, would be forced to report to their members.
And to be really useful to them.
This measure would allow the emergence of new forms of employee representation such as cooperatives or unions providing training, advice and representation, which can also compensate for the shortcomings of historical organizations.
Lastly, within the company itself, access to digital tools must be encouraged to promote social dialogue by modernizing it.
New technologies give companies the tools to express themselves and make direct demands from employees.
They must be used to the full.
Internal petitions are a great way for company management to take the pulse of a business.
Associated with corporate social networks, these new devices must be encouraged to increase the number of people speaking in a regulated framework.
The use of the digital corporate referendum could allow each employee to express themselves on various subjects, in particular that of working conditions.
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It is difficult to predict the nature of the upheavals that will take place in the coming decades. But we can be sure that they will take place. France needs strong, apolitical and pragmatic unions capable of supporting all workers (and not just employees) throughout their working life. If we do not give ourselves the means to first rebuild the legitimacy and dynamism of our unions, the strengthening of the social dialogue that each government is calling for will continue to be a futile invocation.
