ABSTRACT
Interunion rivalry has become an integral part of French industrial relations. The leaders of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) had not given up the alliance with the CGT, but they had clearly decided to give it lower priority. For two years prior to the 1966 accord, CGT-at the confederal level, but especially at the federal level in the public services-actively sought to coordinate its objectives with the CFDT. A sharper criticism of the alliance with the CFDT, however, appeared during the months leading up to the Forty-first Congress in 1982, when the CGT identified its most important membership losses with a loss of identity encouraged by union cooperation. Whatever the success of the alliance in maximizing union influence in bargaining and political decision-making, it is now clearly perceived by both the CGT and the CFDT as having sapped their organizational ability to organize and mobilize workers.
