2018 is a year to forget for the unions. But it is unlikely that 2019 will be that of renewal, as the disintegration seems to be marked. The movement of the "yellow vests" has, in this respect, served as a revealing. The trade union organisations have been short-circuited, so that the claims around the power of purchase are traditionally part of their corpus and that the low-income earners occupying the roundabouts are supposed to be the bulk of their troop. Number of "yellow vests" have expressed a distrust of the unions, distrust visible for years in the polls. Affairs at FO in the fall - the revelation of a file illegal executives led to the resignation of the secretary-general Pascal Pavageau - have not helped things.

This distrust also reads in the decline of participation in professional elections. Less than half of the civil servants (49.8 percent) moved between November 29 and December 6 to elect their ...