ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine the trade union confederation positions on the major political choices relative to the organization of social life: choices bearing on the quality of life and general social needs, on regional development, and on the economic options for national development. The French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) elaborated a strategy for control that corresponded to political definition of the social environment: control over the expansion of industrialization, over the extension of capitalist logic to all sectors of social life, and over the tendency toward centralization of decision-making. With the left’s ascension to power in 1981, the CFDT hoped for a major slowdown of the nuclear program. The CGT’s approach to the problem of the social environment can be understood through examining its analysis of social needs and its critique of social policy and planning. In the early 1970s the issues of the social environment, the natural environment, and “quality of life” generally received a strong popular response.
