General Confederation Of Labour (France)
The General Confederation of Labour (French: Confédération générale du travail, CGT) is a national trade union center, the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions.
It is the largest in terms of votes (32.1% at the 2002 professional election, 34.0% in the 2008 election), and second largest in terms of membership numbers.
Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995–96 (it had more than double when François Mitterrand was elected President in 1981), before increasing today to between 700,000 and 720,000 members, a bit less than the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT).
According to the historian M. Dreyfus, the direction of the CGT is slowly evolving, since the 1990s, during which it cut all organic links with the French Communist Party (PCF), to a more moderate stance, and concentrating its attention, in particular since the 1995 general strikes, to trade-unionism in private sectors. Most recently in the news for briefly delaying Stage 3 of the Tour de France on July 7, 2008.
Read more about General Confederation Of Labour (France): Famous Members
Famous quotes containing the words general and/or labour:
“As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses—that man your navy, and recruit your army—that have enabled you to defy the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob; but do not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)