The Conseil national du patronat français (CNPF; National Council of French Employers) was an

employers' organization An employers' organization or employers' association is a collective organization of manufacturers, retailers, or other employers of wage labor. Employers' organizations seek to coordinate the behavior of their member companies in matters of mutu ...

created in December 1945 on request of the

Provisional Government of the French Republic The Provisional Government of the French Republic (PGFR; , GPRF) was the provisional government of Free France between 3 June 1944 and 27 October 1946, following the liberation of continental France after Operations ''Overlord'' and ''Drago ...

, which wanted a representative organization of all of the employers.

Origins

On 27 July 1944 the Free French government in

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

annulled the Vichy decrees, dissolved the Peasant Corporation (Corporation paysanne) and reestablished all the syndicates of 1939 apart from the

Confédération générale du patronat français The Confédération générale du patronat français (CGPF: General Confederation of French Proprietors) was a French manufacturers' association during the last years of the French Second Republic from 1936 to 1940. It supported the rights of ''pa ...

(CGPF), which represented employers. The ''Centre des jeunes patrons'' (CJP) helped organize the CNPF in 1944, as did various leading employers with modern and civic-minded views. Henri Lafond worked with Pierre Ricard and Henri Davezac to form the CNPF.

Georges Villiers Georges Villiers (15 June 1899 – 13 April 1982) was a French mining engineer who was Mayor of Lyon during World War II (1939–45), then was deported to Dachau. After the war for many years he was head of the national employers association. E ...

was the first president.

History

A division soon appeared between those such as Lafond who felt employers deserved certain rights, which should be regulated by law, and those who were opposed to any diminution of the absolute authority of the patron. The latter group included Marcel Meunier (1893–1971), a declared paternalist who became head of the CNPF social commission. Under the initiative of

Ernest-Antoine Seillière Ernest-Antoine Seillière de Laborde (born 20 December 1937) is a French entrepreneur and the heir to the Wendel empire (representing €730 million). He is a member of Le Siècle think tank, an officer of the ''Légion d'honneur'', and an offi ...

, the CNPF transformed itself in 1998 into the MEDEF ( Mouvement des Entreprises de France).

Notes

Sources

* * * Employers' organizations Contemporary French history {{france-org-stub