French Confederation of Christian Workers


French Confederation of Christian Workers

 

(FCCW; Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens), a Catholic national trade union association in France. Founded in 1919, the FCCW was primarily made up of office workers, officials, railroad workers, and textile workers. In the mid-1920’s it had between 100,000 and 140,000 members. It belonged to the International Confederation of Christian Trade Unions. Basing its actions on the social doctrines of the Catholic Church, the FCCW advocated class cooperation and sought to improve the situation of the working people. In November 1940 the FCCW, with other trade unions, was disbanded by the Vichy regime.

The confederation was revived in July 1944, and by 1946 it had about 500,000 members. After World War II there arose in the FCCW a leftist faction, which called for the abandonment of the confederation’s close ties to the Catholic Church. During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, the left-wing opposition in the FCCW became stronger and assumed an anticapitalist stance. At an extraordinary congress held in 1964, 70 percent of the delegates declared their support for reforming the FCCW and established the French Democratic Confederation of Labor.

The French Confederation of Christian Workers–Maintained was formed by the minority within the FCCW that disagreed with the resolutions of the 1964 congress. The CFTC–Maintained takes right-wing reformist Catholic positions. It had approximately 400,000 members in 1980 and belongs to the World Confederation of Labor.