The tension did not fall on Tuesday, at the CGT congress. However, the day had started with an ecumenical moment. The thousand activists gathered until Friday in Clermont-Ferrand had joined the morning parade against the pension reform. This was not enough to calm the spirits.
Critiques
The debate on the activity report with which the afternoon started did not turn to the advantage of Philippe Martinez and the one he wants to see succeed him, Marie Buisson, whose future seems compromised the end of this second day of the congress.
During the previous congress, in 2019, only a handful of interventions had castigated a confederal leadership deemed not combative enough. This time around, critics far outweighed support.
The morning declarations of Philippe Martinez supporting the inter-union proposal to request “mediation” on the pension reform were notably targeted, as, again and again, membership in the collective Never again with Greenpeace but also the unitary approach, several detractors targeting the CFDT.
“It is the consequence of not having associated the organization with the decisions in a vertical vision of the direction of the confederation”, underlines an activist. The absence of internal debate linked to the verticality of the functioning of the confederal management has indeed been denounced several times.
The activity report rejected by 50.32% of the votes
Without the climate being as electric as the day before, the reactions of the room showed an audience more receptive to criticism than to praise, only the middle of the room, where Marie Buisson’s supporters are gathered, applauding the few interventions in management defense.
The result was a real snub for Philippe Martinez since the activity report was rejected even if it was narrowly with 50.32% of the vote. It confirms the division of the organization but it especially endangers Marie Buisson. She endorsed the results of Philippe Martinez’s last mandate by presenting the opening report of the congress and she remained in the wheel of the steelworker until the end, accompanying him again on Tuesday morning at the demonstration in the head square. . “It’s dead for her,” concluded several congressmen.
The confederal leadership sounded
The confederal leadership was clearly struck by the vote on the activity report. This Tuesday’s meeting, which was to continue until the agenda was exhausted, ended at 6 p.m. The presentation of the policy document should have taken place at the end of the day. It has been postponed. Knowing that the commission in charge of examining the thousands of amendments tabled has already largely agreed to modify it on major points, another sign of weakness.
Wednesday will be decisive with not only the debate and the vote on the orientation document, which we do not know who will present it, but also and above all the meeting, in the evening, of the national confederal committee.
This body which brings together the number one federations and departmental unions must elect the executive committee which is the extended management of the central. It is within it that, on Friday morning, the same CCN will elect the secretary general and the team of the confederal office of about ten members with whom he or she must lead the confederation for three years and above all try to collect it. The co-secretary general of the UFSE (Federal Union of State Trade Unions), Céline Verzeletti, said she was “available” on Tuesday to take the lead of a “much more offensive” CGT.