Le rôle de l'administration du Travail dans la reconnaissance de la représentativité des organisations professionnelles.. Interprétation et usages de l'ex-article L. 133-2 du Code du travail (1946-2006)

This article deals with the role the French administration plays in the evaluation of the representativeness of employers? organisations and workers? trade unions that don?t belong to the five main confederations. Using archives that had never been studied before, it describes the evolutions the administrative frame of representativeness enquiries has undergone since 1936. It then analyses the flexible use made by the administration of the five evaluation criteria in force until 2008 (number of members, independence, union dues, how old and how experimented the union is, patriotic attitude during the German Occupation) and shows that the Labour administration acts differently whether it investigates an employers? organisation or a workers? union. It finally highlights the Labour administration?s doctrine that combines objectivity (the rule of the five percent has prevailed ever since the beginning of the nineties) and subjectivity (it tries to anticipate the way organisations that would be granted representativeness would act in future collective negotiations).