September 10: “This movement calls for actions that go beyond the usual union repertoire”

On the one hand, the inter-union (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC, Unsa, FSU Solidaires) which must determine the follow-up to their opposition to François Bayrou's 2026 budget, during a meeting on September 1st. On the other, calls to block the country on September 10th launched in mid-July on social networks , and which have since been structured through Telegram loops.

LFI, the PCF, EELV, and, to a lesser extent, the PS announced their support for this mobilization this week. While anger is palpable against the $43.8 billion budget cuts planned by the executive, the social back-to-school season is expected to be a boiling point.

"We need mobilizations, there will be many like the one on September 10, and there will be others," warns Thomas Vacheron, CGT confederal secretary. The union will decide on its methods of action at the start of the school year during a National Confederal Committee (CCN) on August 26 and 27. For Baptiste Giraud, lecturer in political science , the September 10 appeal "has already had a significant media and political impact."

Can France be blocked on September 10?

I remain very perplexed at the moment about how this movement will materialize. At the moment, even if union activists begin calling for mobilization on the 10th, we are not certain that this movement will take hold in the activist agendas of company unionists. That is, those who are concretely in a position to drive and organize large-scale mobilization.

The September 10th call may be the beginning of a process of larger mobilization, but it is too early to tell. However, this call has already had a significant media and political impact, in that it is clearly establishing itself as the event around which the social and political return to school tends to be organized, whereas one might have expected it to be more around a call for inter-union mobilization.

Left-wing parties support the September 10th mobilization. What interests do they have?

For political parties, September 10th is an opportunity to seize in their back-to-school agendas against the government. For these left-wing forces, this call is an opportunity to strengthen and legitimize their own strategy of opposition to the Bayrou government, by attempting to articulate it with a social mobilization and to give the latter a left-wing political meaning, whereas the RN, on the contrary, displays its reluctance to support this mobilization.

September 10 supporters are organizing via Telegram. What forms might this mobilization take?

For the time being, the movement is planning a wide variety of actions: boycotts, lockdowns, blocking flows... so many forms of action that go beyond the usual union repertoire. We can see them as attempts to find alternatives to strikes that are more difficult to organize to block the economy. But this diversity of action perspectives also testifies to the very composite nature of this call and its lack of organization and structure. I would add that the implementation of such forms of action undoubtedly remains even more complex than for strikes...

The 2023 movement did not result in the withdrawal of the pension reform, but it did provide a framework for social protest. What lessons can be learned from the inter-union mobilization in this upcoming sequence?

And the failure of this previous mobilization is undoubtedly one of the main obstacles that union organizations will have to overcome in the minds of their activists and employees to convince them to remobilize. The prospect of France coming to a standstill thanks to a single call is perplexing. For the record, on March 7, 2023, at the height of the movement against pension reform, the inter-union organization failed because the strikes were not sufficiently supported. I therefore find it hard to imagine that a movement initiated by a call outside of the unions would be enough to create the conditions to stop work and block the economy, where all the union organizations have failed.

Are unions still key to the success of social mobilization?

One of the great lessons of the history and sociology of social movements is that the development of collective mobilizations remains highly dependent on the mobilization of organizations equipped with the resources and activist know-how necessary to drive and coordinate mobilization over time. However, the weakening of trade unionism also explains why the involvement of unions in the struggle is certainly not a guarantee of greater success for the mobilization, as in 2023.

The inter-union meeting is scheduled for September ^1st , and a broad mobilization of unions is on the table for the start of the school year. Can convergence occur?

It is clear that two rallying logics coexist. On the one hand, that of the confederations: The CGT is doing everything possible to involve all the union organizations in an offensive social movement, at the start of the school year, against the Bayrou budget. On the other, this call for mobilization launched outside the unions, on clearly very heterogeneous political bases, and which is now seized upon by a whole series of activists marked by the extreme left, in the hope of instigating a more radical mobilization on the occasion of September 10 and of bringing together social anger. It is clear that this attempt is fueled by the still uncertain position of the inter-union, and the lack of prospect of concrete mobilization that it currently gives to the activists most determined to oppose the Bayrou government's budget project.

Why do confederations favor the option of united unionism?

The 2023 mobilization demonstrated that trade union unity is likely to create more favorable conditions for broadening the mobilization, not only because it allows more activists to be enrolled in the action, but also because it strengthens the legitimacy of the mobilization and the perception of its possible success. The risk, of course, is that the search for trade union unity in the struggle will come at the cost of moderating demands and methods of action, and that it will therefore not be enough to force the government to back down.

If some confederations align with the 10th, more reserved trade unions may be put off from engaging in a social movement. This is a dividing line. The reinvestment of the September 10th call by organizations and activists with a strong extreme left-wing stance contributes to giving it a tone that may be likely to slow down the commitment of some unions.

Can the failure of the "conclave" and the violence of the attacks contained in François Bayrou's budget push the most moderate confederations to mobilize?

It would be very worrying if ideological and strategic differences between unions prevented them from agreeing on a common call for mobilization. Trade union organizations have probably never been so challenged in their role as interlocutors of the political power, and their demands so ignored by the latter. François Bayrou has sought to maintain the illusion that he aspires to a return to a practice of power more attentive to the "social partners."

The failure of the so-called pension conclave to produce any compromise, even minimal, between unions and employers actually demonstrates the limits of the "social dialogue" that the Bayrou government is prepared to accept. However, it is not enough to note the political marginalization of the role of unions and the limitations of the functioning of social dialogue mechanisms. Unions must also be able to subvert them through their ability to mobilize employees. In this regard, however, they have lost much of their power, and this also explains the increasingly strong temptation for governments not to seek compromise, even with the most moderate.