France learns (again) what sectoral bargaining means

The worst idea proposed for American labor-relations policy is “sectoral bargaining.” Recall the definition of sectoral bargaining, and how it differs from current American labor-relations practice, as explained in Capital Research Center’s “Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining.” We write:

Sectoral bargaining is designed to prevent this “right of exit” for workers who do not want their work conditions subject to the whims of a Big Labor ideological commissar—indeed, that is precisely the point of sectoral bargaining. Under the present American system (and the system that would be maintained by the PRO Act), workers negotiate with their bosses at the firm or individual-shop level (known in the trade as “enterprise bargaining”). If a union is established, that union has the power to insist (and in practice unions always exercise the power to insist) that a single contract apply to all the workers in the relevant work situation. Sectoral bargaining changes that: It empowers a union or group of unions to negotiate contracts that apply to all workers in an industry with many employers simultaneously. If a worker does not favor the contract negotiated, too bad; he would have to change professions, not merely employers, to get out from under union boss power. And in all likelihood, even that would not work. In France, while a smaller proportion of the workforce is union members than in America, nearly all jobs are subject to union-negotiated sectoral contracts.

Arise, children of the Fatherland!

The mention of France in the definitional material was not coincidental. The country, despite having fewer union members as a proportion of workers than America, is notorious for its disruptive strikes. So, in determining whether to import European labor regulations, looking at France is instructive.

And this week, there is another warning that this import might age less like wine than raw milk.

France has been in a state of political dysfunction since mid-2024, when President Emmanuel Macron made the unbelievably stupid decision to call an unscheduled midterm legislative election. French legislative elections are usually scheduled for shortly after a French presidential election, with the designed intention to secure the president a legislative majority, which allows him to rule almost by decree. A French president with a legislative majority does not face a powerful Senate with minority-party powers or scheduled midterm elections like those faced by an American president.

President Macron’s Ensemble pour la Republique electoral alliance had failed to secure an absolute majority in the elections following Macron’s 2022 re-election, but with the support of the center-right Les Republicains could pass legislation.

Macron threw this perilous but stable situation away in 2024 after his alliance lost support in the European Parliament elections to the populist-nationalist Rassemblement National (RN). The elections did not yield a triumph for his centrist bloc, though; instead, a left-wing alliance won roughly one-third of seats, Macron’s alliance won slightly less than one-third, and the RN won slightly less than Macron’s alliance. (The remainder went to rump Les Republicains, minor parties, and regionalist/sovereigntist representatives from France’s outlying possessions.)

The result has been a year of rotating prime ministers (who are appointed by President Macron but can be voted out by the legislature), as France simultaneously tries to deal with its government deficit, which is almost double the European Union’s target of 3 percent of gross domestic product. (The United States’s federal deficit is comparably bad.)

Against us, the banner of tyranny is raised!

The most recently ousted prime minister, Francois Bayrou, had proposed (with President Macron’s backing) substantial budget cuts. Both the left-wing bloc and the RN bloc in the legislature opposed the cuts, so Bayrou was tossed from office. His successor, Sébastien Lecornu, is trying to negotiate with opposition parties to secure the cuts, but they are not interested and may throw him out of office in a budget vote next month.

Enter the French labor unions, powered by sectoral bargaining powers and unchecked by Taft-Hartley-style restrictions on the objects of strike action. They are holding a nationwide “general strike,” and demanding an Everything Leftist list of concessions in any budget Lecornu might present to the legislature. Politico Europe reports:

While the Socialists [a junior member party of the legislature’s left-wing bloc] have not ruled out working with Lecornu entirely, they are entering negotiations with demands that are hard for both Macron’s camp and Les Républicains to swallow — including a minimum 2 percent tax on those worth more than €100 million that was inspired and popularized by French economist Gabriel Zucman.

Higher taxes on France’s most wealthy citizens are one of several demands being made by those going on strike. In their initial announcement on Aug. 29, before Lecornu took the reins from Bayrou, unions demanded that the government invest in France’s social safety net, green transition and reindustrialization effort. They also voiced opposition to Bayrou’s proposed budget squeeze.

Let’s march! Let’s march!

French organized labor then is employing its ability to shut down the economy to assert its special-interest power over the representative government of the French Republic. The government expected more than just annoyance, having deployed some 80,000 police and gendarmes backed by armored vehicles to keep order.

But Americans are not Frenchmen. When this style of extortionate unionism has been tried in the United States, the response has tended to be harsh, if not necessarily swift. Amid a national strike wave in 1945-46 that included several city-level “general strikes,” President Harry Truman announced a crackdown on railroad strikers that involved threats to draft them into the army and comparisons to the Japanese who had bombed Pearl Harbor less than five years previously.

The public thought Truman hadn’t gone far enough. In 1946 it elected a Republican-majority Congress (the first since the Great Depression) and enough union-skeptical Democratic allies to pass the Taft-Hartley Act, with its limits on strikes for reasons other than immediate labor disputes, over President Truman’s (possibly entirely cynical) veto. The French political shutdown tactics would not be imported with the Burgundian wine and Normandy cheese.

Adopting sectoral bargaining in the United States would un-learn the hard lessons taught in the Truman era and enable Big Labor to engage in French-style national disruptions. Conservatives have seen fit to keep that problem on the European side of the pond for almost 80 years. There is no reason to import this particular French product.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/france-learns-again-what-sectoral-bargaining-means/