Sporting a bushy, rugged moustache, Philippe Martinez certainly looked the part of a revolutionary Frenchman as he led protests aimed at forcing President Emmanuel Macron to abandon his bid to raise the pension age.
But people who know him say the 61-year-old boss of the CGT, France’s oldest and most hard-line trade union, has carefully cultivated the image, which is in fact fake. The real Martinez, he said, was a negotiator and pragmatist with a dry sense of humor.
The former metalworker at carmaker Renault is now putting those skills, also well-known, to use in the most important battle of his eight-year tenure at the helm of the CGT.
Ending Macron’s pension reform is an immediate priority. But it also managed success (he went down at the end of the month) and kept the CGT relevant at a time when the membership has fallen so much that it has lost the crown as the largest Union of France for the CFDT Moderate.
“We have to stop France so that the president listens to us,” Martinez said on Monday. The CGT has hardened its tactics, with rolling strikes that have disrupted transport, blocked deliveries to gas stations and cut electricity output at nuclear plants.
Martinez has been preparing for this moment since childhood. He was born in the suburbs of Paris to a Spanish republican activist mother. His father, a Frenchman, fought with the anti-Franco forces in the Spanish civil war.
“Philippe grew up in a militant family, so he has been protesting since childhood,” said Fabien Gâche, a former colleague at Renault. “The belief that social progress can only come from workers putting their strength on the streets is something deep in our DNA.”
He first joined the youth wing of the Communist Party in high school, but later left the party. At the age of 21, he began working as a technician at the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt on the outskirts of Paris. He remained at the French car factory throughout his career.
At Renault, he joined and rose through the ranks of the CGT, which was founded in 1895 and has long been associated with international socialism and the Communist party. Dominique Andolfatto, a political scientist at the University of Burgundy, said that although the CGT is often seen as monolithic, it always contains various leftwing currents. “It is a unity that reflects the national history of France and symbolizes the fragmentation of the left.”
In the 1970s, the CGT had 2 million members. But while Martinez was fighting for workers at Renault, the union was on the wane. Globalization has led to a wave of factory shutdowns in France, as unions struggle to protect workers from the effects of stronger competition and deregulation on business. Membership has dropped to 660,000 today, according to Andolfatto.
Martinez is not alone to blame for the decline, according to Denis Gravouil, head of the CGT branch representing workers in the cultural sector. He noted frequent trips to companies of all sizes and types to hear from workers. “Everyone wanted to take a selfie with him at the factory and at the protest march,” Gravouil said. “But he was not diplomatic, so it created internal tension.”
Since the pension protests began, the CGT has formed a successful coalition with seven other unions in what has been the biggest mobilization in decades. Martinez has allowed critics to demonize him and the CGT for intransigence, letting the CFDT Laurent Berger become the face of the movement. In a front-page photo of the pair beaming at the protest, newspaper Libération called the bromance “fight honey”, which is a play on the French word for honeymoon and class war.
“Philippe Martinez is not a bad person because someone wants to paint,” Berger said in an interview. “He is a unionist who has carefully developed an image of a curmudgeon but in fact he is focused on labor issues. He has led this movement responsibly.
Martinez argued that raising the retirement age to 64, which he paired with Macron’s proposed reforms with a 43-year work requirement for full retirement, was unfair — he said it would hurt blue-collar workers the most. CGT wants people to retire at 60 with more pensions for all, and which will be financed with more taxes on companies and the rich.
A government official who knows Martinez heard sighs when asked about CGT’s pension plan. “This will eliminate millions of jobs!” the man said. “Philippe is dogmatic. His position is outdated.”
Within the CGT, Martinez is actually seen as a moderate who has sought to attract younger members by adding issues such as climate change and feminism to the union’s agenda. He has chosen Marie Buisson, a school teacher, to succeed him, although other candidates are also running. She will be the first woman to lead the CGT, and the only one at the head of a major trade union today.
Asked by a TV reporter recently if he would shave off his mustache after retirement because he didn’t need to “cause fear”, Martinez replied: “You don’t like my moustache?” Regardless of the fate of his facial hair, he vowed to “still be on the road with my friends even if I’m not at the front of the march”.
This article has been amended to clarify that Marie Buisson will be the first woman to lead the CGT; Other major unions have been led by women
leila.abboud@ft.com