Battle of the Acronyms as France Prepares for a Strike

By: Laurie | October 7th, 2008

Striking is as French as baguettes, and a source of much French angst and humor. When our readers were chatting recently on the France blog about the emptiness of a stadium in Paris, one reader said,

Laurie- No one went to the game because september is the month for strikes.
Do you think people will waste their time at a france game, when they can be
planning out what time to go on strike the next day??? thats asking too much from us

Alas, the strikes may soon be including football. Here’s a quick primer on the acronyms involved:

UNFP (Union Nationale des Footballeurs Professionnels) — the players’ union threatening to strike. Not to be confused with the
UCPF (Union des Clubs Professionnels de Football) — this is the group that represents the clubs’ management.

and we also have the

LFP (Ligue de Football Professionnel). They manage the two professional divisions of football, Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. This is the group that’s supposed to bring everybody together into one big happy family. Except for the fact that they’re “in a tag team” (i.e. working closely with) the UCPF — the guys who run the clubs.

And don’t forget the…

FFF — (Fédération Française de Football) — the group that’s ultimately responsible for everything in the world of French footy, both club and national. They’re the ones who have the ultimate authority for the LFP’s decision.

So what’s the issue that could cause the strike?

The dispute is largely regarding the make-up of the board of directors of the LFP, which is current made up of 25 members, 12 of which are presidents of the clubs. The UCPF, the union representing the clubs, will not back down over their demands to see this number raised to 14 whereas the UNFP, the union of the players, will refuse to accept this, fearing changes to the season’s calendar and salaries.

Twelve vs. fourteen may not seem like a huge difference, but with the proposed change, club presidents would be in the majority and could do pretty much whatever they chose, players be damned. Fears are that the club representatives would then be able to unilaterally enact policies that would benefit clubs’ finances to the detriment of the players — things like scheduling additional games, or altering the salary structure. The players are understandably not happy about this.

The rule change will ultimately be decided by the FFF. Remember the FFF? Remember the debate and dissension that’s going on over the soul of the France National team? Remember the accusation that the FFF is an Old Boys Club resistant to change and not good at listening to the will of the people? That’s not helped here by the fact that the LFP president, Frederic Thiriez, is also on the FFF. Not exactly unbiased.

If they botch this and the players enter into a long-term strike and people don’t get their footy fix, it could come back to bite them pretty badly.

Right now the LFP and the UNFP (players) are deadlocked. Their main hope is intervention by Bernard Laporte, the current French Secretary of State for Sport, who has voiced some support for the issues faced by both side. (Note to US fans: This is so cool. Why do we not have a Secretary of State for Sport?) He has called the LFP’s proposal “legitimate but not convenient,” meaning they have the right to make the chanage, but it may not be the best thing for the sport.

One option? Allow the changes, but delay them until 2012. But the LFP aren’t keen on that — they’re more into the “soon as possible” option.

This doesn’t work for the Players’ Union, and they’re calling for a one-weekend strike, October 24-27. As intransigent as both sides sound at this point, I’m guessing this is pretty much inevitable.

Problem is, one weekend may not fix the issue. Then what? Another weekend strike? A longer one? If this were to drag on into January, we could probably expect an exodus of players to other leagues — something that’s already a huge problem in French football due to the financial and tax structure in the country and the leagues.

So now it’s looking like it will come down to intervention by the President of the FFF — Jean-Pierre Escalettes. Yippee. Because we all know how well he’s handled that Raymond Domenech situation.