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:
“Everyone confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)