Philippe_Martinez_(trade_unionist)
Philippe Martinez (born 1 April 1961) is a French trade unionist. He was the general secretary of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) from 2015 to 2023.
Philippe Martinez (born 1 April 1961) is a French trade unionist. He was the general secretary of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) from 2015 to 2023.
Paul Aubriot (30 July 1873 - 16 February 1959) was a French politician.
Aubriot was born in Paris. He originally joined the Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party (POSR), which merged into the French Socialist Party (PSF) in 1902. The PSF in turn merged into the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1905. Aubriot represented the SFIO in the Chamber of Deputies from 1910 to 1919 and the French Socialist Party (PSF) from 1919 to 1928.
Henri Cueco (19 October 1929 – 13 March 2017) was a French painter, essayist, novelist and radio personality. As a self-taught painter, his work was exhibited internationally. He was the author of several books, including collections of essays and novels. He was also a contributor to France Culture. A communist-turned-libertarian, he was a co-founder of Coopérative des Malassis, an anti-consumerist artists' collective. He was best known for The Red Men, a series of figurative paintings depicting aspects of the Cold War like the May 1968 events, the Vietnam War and Red Scare, and his 150 still lifes, or "portraits," of potatoes.
André Charles Adrien Tollet (1 July 1913 – 14 December 2001) was a French upholsterer, trade unionist and communist. He played a central role as chairman of the Paris liberation committee in the days leading up to the Liberation of Paris in 1944.
Bernard Thibault (born 2 January 1959) is a French trade unionist who was the secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) between 1999 and 2013, a French workers' union. He represents the moderate wing of the CGT, as opposed to the more radical wing noted in Marseilles' trade union.
Bernard Thibault was born on January 2, 1959, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, from a family hailing from the Morvan area.
At the age of 15, he entered the SNCF apprenticeship centre in Noisy-le-Sec, which he left in 1976 with a qualification in general mechanics. He was then hired by the SNCF yard at Paris-la-Villette. In 1977, he joined the Confédération générale du travail, and was put in charge of the union's "Young workers commission". In 1980, he became secretary of the union in his train yard, and was later elected secretary of the CGT for all rail workers of the Eastern Paris railroad network.
During the strikes of 1986, he provided the impetus for the start of the strikes and is credited with forwarding the principle of coordinated strikes, which the unions had until then been reluctant to adopt. He promoted integrating non-unionist strikers into the decision process, which was largely left to general assemblies of workers at the local level (a practice that was repeated during the large 1995 strikes). He was at the time considered one of the main figures of the strike and a symbol of the renewal of the CGT.In 1987, he joined the French Communist Party and, shortly thereafter, the CGT federal office for rail workers. In 1997, he was appointed to the confederal office. During the 46th Congress of the CGT in January–February 1999, he succeeded to Louis Viannet as the head of the confederation. He also resigned his national responsibilities in the Communist Party, to fight the idea that the unions were the force driving the party.
Thanks to his comparatively young age, and to the economic recovery in France at the end of the 20th century, he managed to counter the sag in CGT members. The internal tensions in the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail brought about by the Fillon retirement law prompted members to switch unions and reinforce the CGT.
However, Thibault's efforts to push the CGT towards a more reformist stance, as witnessed for instance during the strikes of November 2007, was met with resistance within the leadership of the union, which for example did not give a voting directive to its members for the 2005 referendum on the European Constitution.
Philippe Poutou (French pronunciation: [filip putu]; born 14 March 1967) is a French far-left politician, former trade unionist and car factory worker. He was the New Anti-Capitalist Party's candidate in the presidential elections of 2012, 2017 and 2022, in which he respectively received 1.15%, 1.09% and 0.76% of the vote.
René Belin (14 April 1898 – 2 January 1977) was a French trade unionist and politician. In the 1930s he became one of the leaders of the French General Confederation of Labour.
He was strongly opposed to communism. In the prelude to World War II (1939–45) he favored a policy of appeasement. After the defeat of France, he was Minister of Industrial Production and Minister of Labour in the collaborationist Vichy Government, holding the latter office until April 1942. He oversaw the destruction of unionism. As a result, he was expelled from the CGT in 1944. After the war he tried to form an anti-communist union movement, but with limited success.