Death of Yvon Gattaz: the former boss of bosses who dreamed of exterminating the unions

To Yvon Gattaz, grateful big business. This Thursday, December 12, tributes are pouring in to salute the memory of the man who defended business leaders throughout his life, through his functions as leader of the National Council of French Employers (1981-1986) but also through his numerous position in public space.

Bernard Arnault, director of LVMH, hastened to pay emotional tribute to a “a highly talented engineer, visionary founder of an industrial and technological group with global reach, tireless promoter of business, economic development and employment. »

Fight against socialism

For its part, the MEDEF mourns the one who “fought stubbornly throughout his mandate to put economic rationality first in public debate, fighting in particular against over-regulation weighing on businesses. » A modest expression to designate the fierce fight led by Gattaz, then boss of bosses, against socialism in power from 1981…

Unlike Bernard Arnault, Yvon Gattaz is not an heir. Born in 1925 in Isère, the son of teachers, he completed brilliant engineering studies, culminating in a diploma from the École centrale de Paris. With his older brother Lucien, he founded the Radiall company in 1952, then specializing in the manufacture of connectors for the very young television industry. The business soon prospered.

Banking on his image as a successful entrepreneur and his tireless defense of “ethical” capitalism, he managed to be elected head of the CNPF in 1981. This was also the year in which François Mitterrand, candidate of the Parti socialist (PS), enters the Élysée. Gattaz, who was horrified by the common program signed in 1972 by the socialists and the communists, decided to enter into resistance against the economic measures advocated by the left in 1981 – increase in the minimum wage, nationalizations, increase in social security contributions, political of demand…

During his mandate, he met François Mitterrand several times face to face. Subsequently, he always claimed to have played a decisive role in the conversion of socialist elites to neoliberalism, which took place in 1983 with the turn towards austerity: “ When I arrived at the CNPF, I had before me an SUT, utopian and sharp socialism, which was transformed into SAR, rounded and responsible socialismquips Gattaz, a great lover of acronyms before the eternal, in an interview given in 1988. I think this conversion of socialists to business is in no way an anomaly of history. Thanks to my action and that of the President of the Republic, it is now definitively acquired. »

Slayer “the union spider”

In 1984, he became famous for a promise which would later be taken up and updated by his son, Pierre Gattaz: he assured the socialist power that the bosses were ready to create 471,000 additional jobs in France (we will admire the mathematical precision of the evaluation), on condition that the government experiments for five years with “New Jobs with Reduced Constraints” (ENCA).

Of course, the “relief” will consist of various exemptions from contributions, associated with the disappearance of the administrative authorization of dismissal, in force in France since 1975. Gattaz will return empty-handed to the “Enca”, but will not remain hungry a very long time: in 1986, for his last year at the head of the CNPF, he obtained from the right-wing government the disappearance of administrative authorization.

After his departure from the management of the employers' organization, Gattaz increased his ultraliberal positions, reserving his best attacks for the unions, which he disliked from the start of his career. In an article published in 2010, he displays such virulence that it shocks even certain editorialists who are unlikely to suspect leftism.

Defending “ the union spider », Gattaz places employee organizations at the top of its “ hierarchy of horrors » personal. A deluge of epithets follows: the unions are “ threatening, tragic, demolishers, demoralizers, strikers, obsolete, politicized, supporters of an outdated egalitarian leveling ».

And conclude with a call for elimination: “ necessary in the 19th century, useful then abusive in the 20th, useless and harmful in the 21st, they must disappear. » We will understand that today, the “ harmful » thus targeted do not rush to pay homage to him…