MARS : Union Audience and Representativeness Measure

The Union Audience and Representativeness Measure (MARS) database was developed following the 2008 reform which established the representativeness of each trade union according to the aggregated results of professional elections. It was necessary to create an administrative database to gather the results of professional elections and aggregate these in order to determine the representativeness of each union nationally as well as at the branch level. The MARS database therefore gathers information on professional elections (excluding the civil service) held in France. It includes, in particular, the characteristics of the lists presented, their scores, the number of seats to be filled, cases of unsuccessful elections, the number of candidates presented and elected, for the first and possible second rounds. This information is taken from the election reports, extracted every four years at the end of cycles coinciding with the deadlines for calculating the representativeness of the unions. The data include two types of files: those containing information on the candidates and those containing information on the election and its results as recorded in the election minutes. These types of files are divided per election and by the potential presence of anomalies in the minutes.