The authors argue that France’s budgetary and financial excesses since 1936 France since 1936 are mainly attributable to increasingly less controlled forms of “joint corporatism” and civil service-based trade union representation. They observe that, for 90 years, the government and parliament have systematically failed to initiate or implement reforms to the healthcare, unemployment insurance and pension systems, which would have made it possible to balance them. The failures of these attempts are said to be due to the hostility of the social partners to any structural reform, for ideological, electoral and/or corporatist reasons. The causes could also be systemic, with the “quasi-regulatory” national extensions of local collective agreements, which the authors consider to be detrimental to employment and public finances.
The authors distinguish several periods: from 1936 to the 1990s, “the gradual rise rise of joint corporatism, marked by a growing dependence on public funds and a shift away from accountability on the part of the social partners, then, from the 1990s onwards, an awareness of the dead ends of the French model and of the difficulty – if not the impossibility – of reforming it. The authors then lament that “the State is retreating everywhere”, but that solutions exist.
The social model just keeps falling apart—less than one in ten workers is a union member, and yet nowhere else in the world do trade unions and employer organizations hold so much power. How did these organizations gain so many privileges? The answer comes down to two almost forgotten decisions: in 1936, the Popular Front gave these organizations the right to draft the so-called ‘professional laws,’ and the state delegated management of Social Security to these same organizations. This book traces this drift from the Matignon Agreements all the way to Emmanuel Macron’s two five-year terms.
The thesis of this book is as follows: by believing they could pacify social relations at low cost, the state opened the way to joint corporatism. This system excludes too many people from activity to claim to maintain a level of social protection that no one wants to see disappear. Beyond this diagnosis, the book also aims to outline ways to restore the French social model with the same actors, the social partners and the state, but on different foundations and principles.
The structure of the book is educational and “effective”: those primarily interested in the history of the French social model can read chapters 1 to 9. Those who want to focus on the economic consequences of the drift and possible remedies can go directly to chapters 10 to 12, which analyze the effects of joint corporatism on employment, productivity, and inequalities, and present reform proposals.
The following topics are covered: persistence of status-based rents, ongoing conflict, the French case in an international perspective, making collective bargaining a contractual process again, rethinking representation and negotiation, impact on productivity, removal of the union monopoly in professional elections and collective bargaining. Chapter 12 proposes a ‘service-oriented unionism’ with funding linked to membership that builds trust, increased transparency, clarification of areas of action, and continues with a method. The conclusion highlights key ‘unlocking’ points: restoring trust, rebuilding without dismantling, and setting up a citizens’ convention (despite the mediocre results of those put in place during the ‘yellow vests’ period).
The appendices conveniently include summary tables of the reform proposals and the three levers to implement (useful for those who skimmed the book), which we leave for readers to discover so as not to spoil the book.
Once again, the authors’ personalities make you want to buy this book ‘with your eyes closed’; everyone will find something for themselves… whether you start with the solutions and then move to the causes, or the other way around.
Dominique Chesneau et Jean-Jacques Pluchart