A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #336 - SUD education: from radical unionism to class collaboration unionism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The SUD education federation is experiencing departures and splits 
revealing its evolution. We return to this to try to understand its 
mechanisms. This text is the result of collaborative writing with 
comrades from SUD education or ex-SUD education. Included in italics are 
extracts from a text "Why we are leaving SUD education" from September 
2023 written by a small group of higher education and research (ESR) 
activists who left SUD education. ---- Different SUD education unions 
were created following the social movement of 1995 to form a federation 
in 1998 built around self-management and anti-hierarchical principles:

Each union is autonomous;
The life of a union and its decisions are based on general meetings of 
members;
At the federal level, a Federal Council (FC) meets every two months. 
Apart from the Congresses, the CF constitute the federal decision-making 
body;
A federal executive commission (CE) is elected whose sole role is to 
animate federal life between two CFs and therefore does not have the 
right to make the slightest decision which would not respect the 
decisions of CF or Congress (combined every 3 years). The political 
bases were a radical class struggle positioning vis-à-vis the hierarchy 
with the desire for a culture of militant consensus.
Since its origin, SUD education has evolved significantly. The 
generation that initiated SUD education has largely left union life to 
retire; new generations have arrived, most often having no militant 
past. The memory of the singularity of SUD education has therefore 
crumbled little by little.

The civil service reform in 2003 led to the transfer of technical agents 
from high schools and colleges to local authorities. Most of the SUD 
education unions therefore decided to no longer unionize these 
categories of staff, therefore falling under SUD Territorial 
Communities, even though they remained colleagues of the teachers. Only 
the ESR sector, a very minority, continues, at the national level, to 
unionize members of administrative and technical staff. SUD education 
now mainly unionizes secondary school teachers.
The center of gravity of union action therefore corresponds to the 
concerns of activists most often belonging to educated middle classes 
and sensitive to fashionable intersectional identity theories (sexism, 
racism, Islamophobia, validism, transphobia, etc.). We must combat this 
discrimination, but it is clear that massive propaganda on these issues 
has become the specificity of SUD education on the union market. The 
prospect of a common fight, class struggle, most often disappears apart 
from occasional incantatory calls for a general strike.
During the last Congresses or in SUD education publications, if an 
orientation towards AESH and AED exists, the working conditions of 
administrative and technical staff are left aside. New members cannot 
therefore be made aware of these concerns. This is all the more serious 
as they most often have no union culture. For example, in a local 
Solidaires AGM on the results of the retirement movement, an AGM 
dominated by SUD education activists, the discussion essentially 
revolved around homophobic or sexist comments that appeared during the 
demonstrations.

The SUD education federation includes national thematic commissions 
which theoretically have no decision-making power. In fact, certain 
national commissions, as well as the EC, become political authorities 
prohibiting any contradictory debate: "Whether on the COVID crisis, 
feminism, anti-racism, criticism of the education system, etc., the 
expression of divergent opinions very often leads to reactions of 
categorical rejection, with no real opportunity for debate. There is 
therefore a more or less explicit political line, defined by the EC or 
the influential federal commissions, and never really debated, which 
could be summarized as follows: "Being in the camp of Good means 
deconstructing oppression and to block the extreme right. Those who dare 
to express a point of view (even nuanced) that does not conform to the 
line expose themselves to all kinds of inconvenience, ranging from 
hostile looks against a backdrop of heavy silence in certain general 
meetings to downright insulting adjectives on discussion lists/ internal 
diffusion: if you argue against the doxa, it is necessarily because you 
are a conspirator, sexist, racist, XXXXphobic, confusionist, 
reactionary, etc. ".

The SUD education federation is increasingly becoming a union like any 
other. At all levels of the federation, verticalization and bureaucracy 
are emerging. A minority of "leaders" imposes itself with the acceptance 
of the majority under the pretext of efficiency. The federal EC, 
representatives of Solidaires and the heads of certain commissions have 
thus become experts. Certain activists, considered essential, have seen 
their discharges exceed what the statutes authorize: "the EC pilots, in 
fact, federal life (CF, Congress) and very regularly allows itself to 
take political positions, without seeking consensus, or even without any 
discussion. This is generally done urgently, since the EC considers it 
must keep pace with media news.»
From then on, any criticism is fought: "comrades are accused in 
particular of "collusion with the extreme right" because of their 
involvement in anti-pass demonstrations or a collective of caregivers. 
In these cases, the EC takes the liberty of sending local structures (UL 
Solidaires or SUD education unions) denigrating messages targeting 
comrades individually, making accusations without proof and going so far 
as to expose their private lives, all without prior information, not 
even to interested parties. ".

The federal positions of SUD education are increasingly imitative of 
traditional unions, running as soon as they are whistled into 
ministerial offices and adopting political positions that are less and 
less divisive with the dominant union currents. For example, during the 
Covid crisis, the SUD education federation called, without any internal 
discussion, for the mass vaccination of children and refused to 
participate in "anti-pass" demonstrations (under the pretext that the 
latter were extremely RIGHT). More recently, at the Solidaires level, 
SUD education supported the position of a bilateral meeting between 
Solidaires and the government during the 2023 pension defense movement: 
in the middle of a social movement where the objective was to strengthen 
grassroots struggles, SUD education was ready to discuss face to face 
with E. Borne in the chairs of Matignon.
Behind a so-called radical screen in the field of feminism and 
anti-racism, SUD education espouses the political orientations of class 
collaboration unions. During the retirement movement, the 
co-spokesperson of Solidaires, Simon Duteil, member of SUD education, 
considered that the national inter-union had done "faultlessly".

Activists tried to lead an internal struggle to counter the shifts 
previously exposed, but it received little response. The vast majority 
of members are not informed about federal life, local AGs bring together 
few people and the majority of militant activity is carried out by a 
minority of discharged people.
In reaction to these criticisms, the federation, notably through the EC, 
led a witch hunt. The Corrèze union was excluded from the Caen Congress 
(May 2022) by a trial worthy of the worst Stalinists, under fallacious 
pretexts of "porosity with the extreme right" and "sexism". In June 
2022, it was the turn of the Grenoble academy union on questionable 
statutory grounds which in reality cut across many other divisions.

Other critical attempts emerged which were all unsuccessful: "All recent 
attempts to initiate a substantive discussion on the above issues, at 
various levels of the federation, have been swept aside. The PIF-PAAAF 
grouping (For a Federative Ideal - Perpetuating Anti-Authoritarianism 
and Self-management within the Federation) requested recognition as a 
minority (in accordance with article 12 of the federal statutes), as 
well as a right dissemination to local unions: rights refused by the CF 
of September 2022. SUD education 76-27 proposed a text requesting the 
opening of a reflection site on internal democracy: request rejected by 
the CF of December 2022. SUD education 47 proposed a discussion point on 
the problems potentially posed by the creation of a federal "anti-sexist 
monitoring unit": point removed from the agenda during the CF meeting in 
June 2023. We therefore note that A majority of local union 
representatives are ready to stand together with the EC/political office 
to hold their line against any internal criticism. ".

For a year and a half, different unions (Grenoble academy, Corrèze, 
Oise, Aquitaine) have united into a new trade union to which members of 
other unions having left SUD education (Guyane, Sarthe, Nord, Pas- 
de-Calais...). Furthermore, pillars of the ESR's activist work 
collectively left SUD education in September 2023, some creating a SUD 
ESR union outside of Solidaires. Incidentally, let us point out that 
these splits mainly concern long-time activists and represent a 
relatively small number of members compared to the total federal number 
which is growing.
During union splits, it is usual for the splitting fraction to partly 
take up the name from which it came: CGTU (split from the CGT in 1921), 
CGT-FO (split from the CGT in 1947), CNT-SO (split from the CGT in 
1947). split from the CNT in 2012). When SUD education Corrèze and SUD 
education Grenoble were excluded (2022), they created SUD Lutte declass 
education; similarly SUD ESR was created.
SUD education banned in November 2022, via the ministry, the 
presentation of SUD Class Struggle Education lists in professional 
elections and has since paid a law firm specializing in commercial law 
for a legal appeal on the name of the brand "SUD ". Recent case law 
considers that, as soon as a union collects contributions, it falls 
within the framework of commercial law (members would pay for a... 
commercial service!).
Several thousand euros of contributions from SUD education members are 
used to prohibit another union from using a name (SUD) under the pretext 
of "commercial" ownership of this name. To our knowledge, only the CFDT 
and the UNSA had dared to rely on bourgeois commercial law to counter 
dissident unions.

SUD education obtains only weak results in professional elections. SUD 
education is therefore trying to imitate the large unions to gain 
institutional recognition, thus hoping to gain votes in these elections. 
Thus, during recent social movements, SUD education has never tried to 
develop a critique of the inter-union, seeking to stick as closely as 
possible to the CGT. This political shift is associated with an 
organizational shift. In 30 years, generational evolution and the 
domination of postmodern ideas have caused SUD education to slide from a 
radical self-managing position to a bureaucratized unionism integrated 
into class collaboration.
SUD education is far from being the only organization experiencing 
splits following the monolithic authoritarianism of intersectional 
identity currents. However, the evolution of this federation raises 
questions about the union action of revolutionary activists and the lure 
of being able to currently constitute a revolutionary unionism in the 
image of the Charter of Amiens (CGT, 1906). Organizing in a union is a 
way of trying to create collectives of resistance to the aggressiveness 
of capitalism where we work[1], which is necessary and can be a 
political lever. But campaigning for the revolutionary transformation of 
our society requires going beyond purely union action, which is 
ultimately quite sterile today, and investing in the struggles and 
structures that are emerging beyond the world of work because the class 
struggle for years, it has been spilling over into the world of work 
(GJ, Sainte-Soline, etc.).

VR

Notes
[1]For the interest of unions, see CA 335, December 2023: "United 
States: the reasons for the anger"

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4052
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