Section Agence France-Presse du Syndicat national des journalistes |
SNJ-AFP |
Agence France-Presse Branch of the French National Journalists' Union (SNJ) |
Staff Elections
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2005: Results and Analysis
Against a Backdrop of Strong Participation, Major Gains for the SNJThe results of the AFP staff representative elections, held every two years as laid down in French labour law, were announced on Friday June 10th. In the "Journalists" category the SNJ list made spectacular gains, coming in only a whisker behind the CGT journalists’ union and well ahead of the rest of the pack. The SNJ-CGT, which was the main beneficiary of an upheaval in the AFP branch of the CFDT union in 2004, won first place. The turn-out for these elections was strongly up on the 2003 figures, a clear result of the crises that have shaken AFP in the past two years - notably the selling-off by management of the headquarters building in Paris, the signing of an austerity contract with the French authorities and the scandal over the bonuses awarded to members of top management. The participation rate came to just over 52% in the election for the works commitee and to over 53% in that for staff representatives. As a result of both the strong turn-out and the inclusion of regular freelancers on the voting rolls - the consequence of a trade union victory in which the SNJ was to the fore - the total number of people who cast votes was up by no less than 45% over the 2003 figure. The SNJ’s two candidate lists profited fully from that increase in representation, and made strong gains above and beyond it. The number of votes cast for our lists was up by 79% in the works committee ballot and by 103% in that for staff reps. In a nutshell: we came close to doubling our audience in two years. Another striking feature of these elections was the failure of the "SUD-AFP" union lists, which turned in scores that were hardly better in numerical terms than when the grouping first appeared - under the provisional label of "MIDI" - in the 2003 ballot. Whereas SUD-AFP and another new grouping, SAJ-UNSA, failed to win a single delegate, more "traditional" French trade unions held up well. Force Ouvrière regained a representative on the Works Committee and the CFDT journalists’ union, which in 2004 had lost a large chunk of activists, mainly to the CGT, managed to cut its losses and hold on to two posts. AFP Staff Elections of June 10, 2005: Summary of Results (main candidates, journalists’ college)The figures given in brackets are the comparable results from 2003.
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