General Labour Federation of Belgium

General Labour Federation of Belgium
FGTB (French) or ABVV (Dutch)

General Labour Federation of Belgium
Fédération générale du travail de Belgique Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond
Predecessor	Belgian Trade Union Federation
Founded	29 April 1945
Headquarters	Brussels, Belgium
Location	Belgium
Members	1.5 million[1]
Key people	Thierry Bodson, chairperson Miranda Ulens, secretary general
Affiliations	ITUC, ETUC, TUAC
Website	www.abvv.be

The General Labour Federation of Belgium (French: Fédération générale du travail de Belgique, or FGTB; Dutch: Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond, ABVV) is a socialist national trade union federation in Belgium. It was founded in 1945. It is affiliated with the International Trade Union Confederation and has a membership of 1.5 million. With said membership the ABVV/FGTB is the second largest of the three major trade unions in Belgium, closely following the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (ACV/CSC) which has 1.6 million members and dwarfing the General Confederation of Liberal Trade Unions of Belgium (ACLVB/CGSLB) which has approximately 300,000 members.^[1] During the bulk of its history the ABVV/FGTB remained closely affiliated with the Belgian Socialist Party which was split in 1978 into a Flemish and a Walloon social-democratic party. While remaining formally independent from any political party, the ABVV/FGTB noticed the increasing influence by the marxist Workers' Party of Belgium amongst its active base during the last decade.^[2]

The first noteworthy historic date when talking about the history of the ABVV/FGTB is the founding of the Belgian Labour Party (BLP) in 1885. While several socialist organisations already existed beforehand this was the first time that the Belgian socialist movement was largely unified and laid the groundwork for the foundation of the ABVV/FGTB. In 1898 the Syndical Commission was erected within the framework of the BLP and in 1937 this Commission formally became independent from the socialist party, as the Belgian Trade Union Federation. Nonetheless strong ties between the socialist union and the socialist party were maintained until today. After the Second World War in 1945 this independent socialist union became the ABVV/FGTB we know today.^[3]

In 2017 the ABVV/FGTB had a total of 1,517,968 members divided across its 7 affiliates. Thus Belgium's second largest labour union noticed a modest decline in membership of 17,340 compared to 2016. On the regional level 726,410 of the aforementioned membership comes from Flanders, 600,945 from Wallonia and 190,613 from Brussels.^[4]

Through the foundation of the Mouvement populaire wallon during the Great Strike that took place in the Winter 1960-1961, the Walloon working class now also demanded federalism as well as structural reforms. The leader of the Strike, André Renard was also a national leader of the General Labour Federation of Belgium.^[7] This whole process will be named Renardism.

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  Protest against economic austerity in Brussels (29 September 2010)

1945: Joseph Bondas

1947: Paul Finet

1952: Louis Major

1968: Georges Debunne

1982: Alfred Delourme

1987: Jean Gayetot

1989: Mia De Vits

2002: André Mordant

2004: Xavier Verboven

2006: Anne Demelenne

2014: Marc Goblet

2017: Robert Vertenueil

2018: Miranda Ulens

1956: Roger Dekeyzer

1957: Willy Schugens

1958: Alfons Baeyens

1959: Hervé Brouhon

1960: Emiel Janssens

1961: Joseph Dedoyard

1963: Victor Thijs

1964: Oscar Leclercq

1965: Desiré Van Daele

1966: Louis Plumier

1967: Gust Wallaert

1968:

1982: André Vanden Broucke

1989: François Janssens

1995: Michel Nollet

2002: Mia De Vits

2004: André Mordant

2006: Rudy De Leeuw

2018: Robert Vertenueil

2020: Thierry Bodson

• Interrégionale wallonne de la FGTB [fr]

• ICTUR; et al., eds. (2005). Trade Unions of the World (6th ed.). London, UK: John Harper Publishing. ISBN 0-9543811-5-7.

• Official website (in Dutch)