Most French employee reps in unions


The level of union membership in France is low, with only one in nine (11%) French employees belonging to a union. 


Despite this, more than half (56%) of all employee representatives are in a union, and almost a third (31%) of all trade union members hold a representative position.


The figures come from a new survey by Dares, the research arm of France’s ministry of labour, looking at the more than 600,000 employees holding some form of representative position in the country. Representatives must be elected in all companies with 11 or more employees in France, and in line with experience in other countries, union presence increases with the size of the workforce. 


In companies with 11 to 49 employees, only one in 17 (6%) of the representatives are in a union. 


But this increases to a quarter (26%) in companies with 50 to 299 employees and two-thirds (68%) in firms with 300 or more.


Asked about the circumstances in which they joined, the responses indicate that a personal approach, most commonly from a union representative or a work colleague, was the most common. 


More than half (51%) of the representatives who were in a union, identified this as the cause. 


Just over one in five (22%) said membership followed problems at work; one in seven (15%) said they joined out of conviction; and 10% said it happened in the context of a dispute.