Laurent Berger’s call to put work back at the center of political discourse

Book. He could have taken stock of his eleven years spent at the head of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) by delivering some crisp anecdotes on the back kitchens of trade unionism. But, before leaving the post of secretary general of his confederation, on June 21, Laurent Berger preferred to talk about what is at the root of his commitment: work. This is a subject “extraordinarily mistreated”while it occupies a ” Central place “ in the lives of millions of women and men, writes the cedist leader in his hard-hitting essay, From contempt to angersprinkled with personal annotations on his experiences as an activist and his family environment, which bequeathed him the “worker pride”.

He believes that the long conflict triggered by the pension reform is a vivid illustration of his point. If hundreds of thousands of people – sometimes over a million – demonstrated against the raising of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, it was because they felt “humiliated”.

Many employees asked for ” acknowledgement “, not only on their pay slip, after the Covid-19 epidemic, during which they had carried the economy at arm’s length, cared for the sick or allowed the population to feed themselves. But their “hope faded” : for them, “nothing has changed or very little”, according to Laurent Berger. Worse even, the power in place told them, “as if to say thank you”that it would have to remain in business for two more years.

Getting out of this situation of denial

This measure could only cause ” anger “because it strikes “exactly the category of front and second line workers, who already feel invisible and despised”. Laurent Berger denounces Emmanuel Macron, whose “liberal logic (…) has hardened”And ” the action “ of the government, which “straightened up”. But what is just as serious in his eyes is the electoral impact of the obstinacy displayed by the executive: by bracing itself on an unpopular law, “tinkered” And “confused”this feeds “a dangerous distrust of our democratic system”with the risk of opening a boulevard to the Elysée for Marine Le Pen in 2027.

The left is not much more to his advantage, according to the leader of the CFDT. She often remained the prisoner of a “rather miserable vision” work, reducing it to suffering and exploitative relationships. Such a reading is “biased” and tends to ignore reality.

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