PARIS--Mass strikes and street protests that for decades gave France an image as a hotbed of labour strife are outdated but could flare anew if a new centrist government ignores unions over labour reforms, the head of the biggest union said on Tuesday.
Polls suggest President Emmanuel Macron's fledgling centrist party will win a crushing majority in elections this weekend. With opposition parties likely to be left fragmented and weak, a standoff with unions is potentially the only major obstacle to Macron pushing through his reform agenda, starting with an overhaul of France's stringent labour code this summer.
"Sterile confrontation - with unions on one side and bosses on the other and where the only way out is through standoff - is old-fashioned, out of date," CFDT head Laurent Berger told Reuters in an interview.
"But it can come back very quickly because it's in our culture. If we want to avoid sterile confrontation, then there's got to be dialogue at all levels," he added.
The more moderate CFDT surpassed the Communist-rooted CGT union this year to become the biggest in the private sector. Its ranks have swollen as it has focused on working with the previous Socialist government, abstaining from high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful CGT-led strikes on a previous labour reform under then-president Francois Hollande.
Berger said Macron's government could neither count on the CFDT to be an ally nor an opponent out of principle, insisting that it would be both demanding and vigilant in labour negotiations. "What I told the president is that there will be moments of confrontation, moments when we don't agree, but that is quite legitimate in democracy, it's no drama," Berger said.
The unions are anxiously awaiting details about Macron's planned labour reform, seeking to present a more united front to Macron's government than they did under Hollande. They are particularly uneasy about plans the government has flagged to allow labour conditions to be set at the workplace rather than sector level, and the setting of fixed limits on court settlements employers have to pay in dismissal cases.
"When we are able to push on certain points together, it's more effective," the Force Ouvriere union head Jean-Claude Mailly told Reuters in an interview.
Last year, bitter rivalry divided the CFDT and harder line CGT and Force Ouvriere over the previous reform which Hollande pushed through despite weeks of strikes.
