Description: Since the year 1895, when the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) was born, the trade union movement in France began a turbulent century of development that has had an enormous impact on French polity, society, and economy. For the last century the French labor movement has occupied a unique and crucial place in the working class movement in Europe as a whole. In February of 1996, Columbia University and New York University marked the centennial of the French labor movement by jointly sponsoring a conference to reflect on the history of this movement and on the future prospects for trade unionism in France. A Century of Organized Labor in France is a collection of the papers presented at that conference, written by distinguished historians and social scientists from both France and the United States, as well as important French trade union leaders. Offering an interdisciplinary approach that is rare among studies on this subject, this volume examines the trajectory of the French labor movement and provides rich lessons for students of contemporary France, Western European politics and society, and comparative labor movements.

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