They managed the feat of replacing, at least momentarily, membership cards with “likes” on Facebook. After the “national collective ASCT”, the SNCF on-board controllers on strike during the holidays, another movement born on social networks is making headlines.
This Thursday, the “Doctors for Tomorrow” collective, which brings together nearly 16,000 supporters on Facebook, brought together several thousand liberal doctors in the streets of Paris to obtain a revaluation of consultations.
On January 23, another informal group, the collective for the survival of bakeries and crafts, is launching a call for mobilization. “We are four poor bakers, and we manage to be heard more than our union”, notes Daniel Coirier, Vendée baker and co-creator of the Facebook group, born in May 2022 when the increase in fuel oil forced one of his colleagues to close shop.
Installed since 2010, he joined the national confederation of French bakery-pastry, responsible for representing 33,000 professionals in the country. But the Vendéen returned his card six years ago, without being able to get rid of a stubborn feeling.
Collectives based on social networks
“I felt like our confederation didn’t represent us,” he says. On the collective’s Facebook group, 1,400 members. And the obtaining of an appointment at the ministry by the advisers of Olivia Grégoire, delegate minister in charge of small and medium-sized enterprises, to talk about the crisis which is shaking the profession: the increase in the price of fuel oil, then that raw materials and rising energy prices.
“Collectives are nothing new. There have always been parallel trade unions, notes Camille Dupuy, lecturer in sociology at the University of Rouen. They will tend to attract more people, since they are thought of more broadly than the unions. It will go beyond the divisions between labels. They form at a specific time, and disintegrate at the end of the mobilization. They are not meant to last. »
More than going to war, collectives and unions are in fact fighting a complementary battle. During the holidays, the SNCF controllers’ strike was decided by a collective. But it was the unions that were able to file the notice, and were then commissioned by the informal group to negotiate a way out of the crisis.
In the same vein, this Thursday’s demonstration by the “Doctors for Tomorrow” collective was supported by several professional unions (UFML, FMF, SML and Young Doctors).
Unions accustomed to cohabitation
“A collective is just a different strategic positioning, not a fight against the unions. Most of the members of the collectives are former union members. They use their resources acquired in trade unionism to create a collective, analyzes Camille Dupuy. Collectives, there were already in the great mobilizations of the 1980s. The unions are used to living with them. »
Between these two types of organization, the only practices that differ take place behind the scenes. “In a collective, decision-making will often be more horizontal, as in the associative world. In a union, the hierarchy is more established,” emphasizes Camille Dupuy.
Bakers, doctors, controllers… Discontent is mounting and the executive is worried. “We have a chance, it is that, for the moment, we do not have a global slogan” in the struggles, specifies a member of the presidential party to BFM-TV. The fear of a resurgence of a spontaneous movement is taking shape, a few days before the presentation of the pension reform. Enough to revive the bad memories linked to the yellow vests: a collective that had taken shape with “likes”… On Facebook.