10. Factory Occupations

Although they never developed into a social revolution, the French factory occupations constituted the largest wave of sit-down strikes in the history of the Third Republic and produced its most significant series of social reforms, including the still controversial forty-hour week. After the harsh years of the depression in the early 1930s, workers’ demands for shorter hours and more pay were understandable. Yet their desires would eventually help to divide the Popular Front and harm its plans for economic recovery and growth.

To comprehend the factory occupations in the spring of 1936, we must review the demographic, economic, and political situation of France in the 1930s. France was hard hit by the carnage of World War I, and its losses, combined with a low birthrate, led to a labor shortage. In addition, although the number of peasants declined by one million between 1911 and 1936, the agrarian sector—relatively backward for an advanced industrial nation—held one-third of the active male population on the land, intensifying the labor scarcity. Throughout the interwar period foreign labor from Italy, Belgium, North Africa, and Spain was recruited to reduce the shortage. On the whole, unskilled and semiskilled jobs found workers, whether French or foreign, but those positions needing skilled labor were more difficult to fill. This lack of skilled workers was to have a profound effect during the Popular Front governments.

After 1931 the economic crisis compounded slow demographic growth as France felt the consequences of the worldwide Great Depression. In industry and commerce, production fell about 20 percent during the 1930s.^[1] Between 1931 and 1936 in firms with over one hundred workers, the number of salaried personnel dropped 24 percent while industrial production declined 13 percent. Although in 1936 France had an unemployment rate of only 5 percent, joblessness was significant in the Paris region, which contained about 20 percent of the active French population but had over 50 percent of the nation’s unemployed. Parisian unemployment was structurally similar to that in other industrial nations, for it too was high in the more advanced industrial sectors.

French governments attempted to combat the economic crisis in various ways. In the early 1930s they increased tariff protection and generally followed policies of deflation that lowered both wages and prices but left unemployment high in French terms. Deflation protected individuals on fixed incomes by keeping the franc costly and avoiding devaluation, but the strength of the franc in relation to other national currencies made French exports comparatively more expensive and hurt industries that sold abroad. Deflationary economic policies failed to stimulate demand and get the economy moving. Governmental expenditures dropped sharply, and many industries—for example, automobiles—were hurt by reduced governmental budgets. The discontent provoked by deflation and the government’s reduced spending, particularly during the government of Pierre Laval (June 1935–January 1936), contributed to the formation of the Popular Front.

Workers experienced in diverse ways the effects of the 1930s economic crisis. Unemployment rose, most notably in the construction and metalworking industries. The rise was such that the Conseil général de la Seine refused to aid the unemployed who arrived in the region after July 1934.^[2] The workers’ buying power did not consistently decline, however; deflation reduced not only wages but also prices. In fact, one economist estimated a 12 percent gain in workers’ buying power between 1929 and 1935.^[3] At Renault, for example, the workers’ real monthly wages increased slightly from 1930 to 1935. In contrast, a team of contemporary investigators saw a 7 percent drop in workers’ “standard of living.”^[4] Overall salaries of the working class declined by 15 percent from 1930 to 1935.^[5] To sum up, when unemployment is taken into account, the overall or global buying power of the class decreased even though workers who were employed gained substantially during this period.

In Paris the overwhelming majority of the employed labored forty-eight hours per week. The number of foreigners who held jobs was surprisingly low. At Renault, foreigners dropped from 16 percent of the work force in February 1932 to 8 percent in May 1936. In the latter month the percentage of non-French in the entire Parisian work force rose slightly, from 4.8 to 5 percent.^[6] The percentage of women in the active population declined from 37.1 in 1931 to 34.2 in 1936.^[7] The privileged majority that held jobs was decidedly French and increasingly male.

Of the unemployed, eighty-one percent lost their job for economic reasons—lack of work, trimming of payrolls, and the closing of firms.^[8] Nineteen percent were dismissed for personal reasons—sickness, low output, and indiscipline. A disproportionate number were foreigners, who were often the first to be dismissed, as 1932 French legislation required. At the beginning of the economic depression older workers made up a large share of the unemployed, but as the crisis persisted, an increasing number of younger workers, who were usually more productive than their older counterparts, were also fired. Before their dismissals only 25 percent of the unemployed had had a stable job (for over five years); many were single, and they remained on the dole longer than those who were married with one or two children. Jobless workers with many children also remained unemployed for long periods, since their additional family allocations nearly equaled their wages.

Working women who were touched by joblessness had particular problems. Nearly twice as many women with unemployed husbands worked as did women in general. Nineteen percent of the jobless, male or female, lived with a mate out of wedlock, compared to 11 percent of the general population. Of unmarried females dwelling with a male, 29 percent were employed, in contrast to 16.4 percent of women in general; some of these jobholders “accepted the hospitality of a boyfriend to avoid paying rent.”^[9] Unemployed women, though, had much greater difficulty finding work than men did; they were often older than the jobless men, and employers preferred to hire the young. In addition, some industries that employed a high percentage of women—textiles, offices, and domestic services—were particularly affected by the depression. Generally, women had considerably lower salaries than men.

The situation, though difficult, was not entirely bleak. Even the unemployed received the necessary minimum of calories, and the quality of their food was adequate.^[10] From 1929 to 1935 the general population’s consumption of food rose 5 percent, thereby continuing a tendency of the early twentieth century. The consumption of sugar and butter increased 50 percent between 1919 and 1939; that of fruits doubled, and that of bread declined.^[11] Despite the crisis and the consequent fall of production, the general level of consumption did not decrease and even increased slightly at the expense of investment. The economic downturn did not halt the progress that had been made in public health during the Third Republic. In spite of the aging of the French population, longevity increased. Legislation such as social security helped reduce the infant mortality rate.^[12]

Both the economic and political situations encouraged an alliance of the leftist political parties in the mid-1930s. As we have seen, the Communist, Socialist, and Radical parties wanted to guard against unemployment and increase consumption. In addition, the Left feared the growth of French right-wing and fascist movements. The example of Germany, where a divided Left was unable to prevent Hitler’s accession to power in 1933 and subsequent destruction of leftist parties and unions, was dramatically present in many minds. After the right-wing riots against the republic in February 1934, the Socialists, Communists, and Radicals initiated long negotiations that culminated in the formation of the Popular Front during 1935. In the elections in the spring of 1936, the Popular Front coalition gained a majority of seats, and the leader of its largest party—Léon Blum of the Socialist party—was mandated to form a new government. The Popular Front’s political momentum ended the decline in the observance of May Day, which had occurred from 1926 to 1934.^[13] In Paris, 120,000 of the 250,000 metallurgists went on strike in 1936, including 75 to 85 percent of the Renault workers. Construction workers almost unanimously refused to labor on l May. Yet not all sectors participated with equal enthusiasm. A militant of the railway workers’ union complained that wage earners remained indifferent to the celebration of May Day.^[14]

After the Popular Front’s electoral victory and before the new Blum government took office, France was confronted by the greatest wave of factory occupations or sit-down strikes that the nation had ever experienced. Aviation workers protesting dismissals of militants who had been absent on May Day initiated the occupations in Le Havre and Toulouse. Thus respect for the workers’ holiday triggered the massive movement. Sit-down strikes, however, were not an invention of aviation workers, nor did workers learn of their existence only in the pages of Humanité or other militant publications. Such strikes “sur le tas” or “de bras croisés” had erupted in construction during the 1930s, and they were, to borrow a phrase from Charles Tilly, part of the popular repertory of the twentieth century. Workers male and female, young and old, French and foreign used tactics of occupation in the years preceding the Popular Front governments.^[15]

During the Popular Front, workers continued to employ sit-downs to prevent scabs from entering the factories, occupation tactics that were particularly well chosen as the growing unemployment began to affect younger and more skilled workers. Just as important, Blum himself had assured the working class that he would not use force against it. Workers sensed correctly that Blum did not want to be the French Noske;^[16] they took advantage of the hiatus in state repression to occupy factories in the suburbs of Paris and, later, throughout France. In addition, the tactics of occupation forced employers to settle more quickly than a walkout would have. They violated property rights and put the machinery and capital goods of the factory directly in the hands of the workers. Sabotage and destruction were possibilities.

The Bloch aviation plant, with seven hundred workers in the suburb of Courbevoie, was one of the first in the Paris region to be affected. Bloch produced airplanes for the state, its principal client, and its wages were relatively high, typical of those in the Parisian aviation industry.^[17] On 14 May 1936 the Bloch workers occupied and spent the night inside the factory, and on the following day management conceded a slight wage hike, paid vacations, and strike pay.^[18] In Paris on 22 May, the personnel of Gnôme et Rhône, which made airplane engines, protested against overtime work and demanded respect for the eight-hour day; they soon won paid vacations and an end to overtime. Several days later, wage earners at other major aviation firms in the Paris region occupied their factories and made similar demands. On 28 May the wave of occupations hit the giant Renault factories at Boulogne-Billancourt. Humanité asserted that “the workers were tired of the low wages, of work speed-ups, of fines, and of the military discipline that is forced upon them.”

On 28 May, the same day on which laborers at Renault struck, workers at Citroën also downed their tools. The sit-downs unfolded from the aviation companies and several firms that manufactured telephone and radio equipment to the large automobile firms. At SIMCA, the French division of Fiat, twelve hundred workers staged a sit-down strike in the “enormous factories.”^[19] Their demands differed only slightly from those formulated at other firms: end of overtime work, eight days of paid vacation, recognition of union delegates, and an increase in wages, especially those of lower-paid workers. On 13 May the Syndicat du bâtiment decided to agitate at the 1937 exposition for a collective bargaining agreement that would establish an eight-hour day, a forty-hour week, and union delegates. Two hundred cement workers at Trocadéro—the site of the World’s Fair—demanded higher pay, a longer lunch break, the end of overtime, and dressing rooms so they could change into clothes that “would command respect.”^[20] The last demand illustrated the narrowing distinctions in clothing between the bourgeoisie and the working class during the Popular Front: manual workers wanted to replace their blue overalls with more stylish clothes.^[21]

With the exception of dressing rooms, the demands of the construction workers basically reiterated what their union leaders had wanted at the end of April.^[22] Indeed, some claims, such as the abolition of the tâcheronnat (contracted piecework), reached back at least to the revolution of 1848. In the system of tâcheronnat a general contractor employed a subcontractor (sous-traitant) who in turn paid workers by the piece. The subcontractors usually hired the most productive laborers and were reluctant to engage the very young or the old. Workers felt that “greedy” and “immoral” tâcherons exploited them. During the depression years of 1932 and 1933, construction workers’ refusal to work for a tâcheron provoked at least three strikes.^[23]

On 29 May an agreement between the union and management was reached at Renault. The accord ended overtime work, increased the lowest wages, promised the completion of toilets and dressing rooms, and guaranteed strike pay for the occupation. By 8:30 P.M. the factories were evacuated.^[24] On 30 May, following the Renault example, strikers at many other factories—among them Nieuport, Caudron, Farman, Brandt, and Panhard— ded their occupations with agreements similar to that reached at Renault, although workers at Bloch, Michelin, Citroën, and Lockheed also won paid vacations. In addition, workers at Citroën received permission to smoke in the factory. The Syndicat des métaux expressed “great satisfaction” with the results of the negotiations, as sixty thousand of the seventy thousand occupiers left their factories.^[25] Many observers thought that the sit-down strikes had ceased.

Although automobile, aviation, and related firms had been largely evacuated by l June, occupations continued at several chemical firms, tire-making plants, and various electronics firms.^[26] On 2 June a renewed wave of occupations affected a significant number of industries. Among them were the aviation firms, Lioré et Olivier (1,200 workers) and Breguet. Although the industries of chemicals and metalworking (300 firms were occupied) were the most affected, other industrial sectors, such as electricity, gas, and printing, also became involved by 3 June. At Renault work stoppages continued sporadically until the occupation was resumed on 4 June. On 5 June Citroën was occupied, and even the provinces began to be touched, although the Paris region remained most active. In certain occupations, workers’ solidarity assumed almost mythic proportions. At Dun and Bradstreet, in a strike that lasted at least twelve days, only 14 of 127 white-collar workers (75 percent of whom were women) refused to participate in an occupation that began on 10 June.^[27]

There has been considerable debate over whether the strikes were spontaneous. The Right has claimed that subversives or Communists organized the occupations. The Left, in general, has emphasized the spontaneity and joyfulness that initially characterized the movement:

Yes, a joy. I went to see my pals in a factory where I worked a few months ago.…A joy to enter the factory with the smiling permission of the worker who guards the door. A joy to find so many smiles, so many friendly words. We really feel ourselves to be among comrades in these same workshops where, when I was working, everyone felt so alone with a machine. A joy to pass freely through the workshops where we had been riveted to our machine, to form groups, to gossip, to take a snack. A joy to hear, instead of the ruthless roar of machines—a striking symbol of our submission to harsh necessity—music, songs, and laughter.^[28]

More recent historiography, especially from historians close to the PCF, has challenged the notion of a joyful and spontaneous strike movement and has stressed the role of Communist militants.^[29] Some evidence exists to support the assertion that Communist or union militants initiated the occupations. In aviation, for example, PCF activists seem to have exercised a degree of control in the occupations. At Renault the strike erupted in workshops where PCF and former CGTU militants were influential.^[30]

According to police, however, the union leadership and the Left were startled by the timing and the extent of the movement:

The strike wave of sit-downs in metallurgical factories of the Paris region has literally surprised the militants of the CGT who were the last to be informed.…

Neither the unitaires [ex-CGTU] nor the confédérés [ex-CGT], both of which had few members at Citroën, sparked its strike.…

The great wave at Renault…began without union officials (militants «responsables») being informed.…

The major papers wanted to believe that the strike wave was Communist-inspired. Now that seems improbable. It is possible that Communist cells…became some of the most avid activists, but it must be acknowledged that Communist union militants were among the first to be surprised by the movement. It is possible that the hopes and enthusiasm that arose after the electoral victory of the Popular Front altered the minds of those who were already discontented with their material conditions.^[31]

Sensing a favorable political and social climate, many workers—sometimes led by shop-floor CGT or PCF militants, sometimes on their own initiative—impulsively left their machines or laid down their tools in May and June 1936. As one historian of the Popular Front remarks, “The only satisfactory thesis is…that of a largely spontaneous movement: From which [came] its unprecedented importance—nearly two million strikers. From which also the prudent behavior of the employers who went with the flow without trying to stop it.”^[32] Workers were happy, even joyous, to stop work and took the opportunity to relax with their co-workers in the noiseless factories and occasionally to initiate love affairs (women composed over 20 percent of the work force in metallurgy).^[33] Although many occupations began spontaneously, CGT militants soon began to organize the strikers and to formulate demands. Union activists organized the safety and the feeding of the workers with assistance from Socialist and Communist municipalities.^[34]

When the Blum government took power on 4 June 1936, its main task was to calm the spreading movement of occupations, which worried not only governmental officials but also union leaders and, of course, the employers themselves. According to Blum, the initiative for negotiations between the employers, the union (CGT), and the government came from representatives of the major employers’ organization, Confédération générale de la production française (CGPF). With one exception, the delegates who represented the CGPF in the negotiations with the CGT and the government “headed large-scale enterprises and corporations located in Paris.”^[35] The employers’ representatives were connected with the more advanced industries, like metallurgy and chemicals. More traditional sectors, for example, commerce, textiles, and construction, were underrepresented in the CGPF delegation.

On 7 and 8 June 1936 the three groups reached an agreement. The employers’ delegates recognized the workers’ right to join a union without the threat of sanctions, and, in turn, non-union members were guaranteed the right to work. The CGPF representatives agreed to the election of union delegates in firms with more than ten workers, and the three groups endorsed the principle of collective bargaining between the management and the union. The accord implicitly condemned the illegal occupations. Blum personally arbitrated the question of wages, raising them between 7 and 15 percent. He also promised to introduce legislation, which was to be approved quickly, guaranteeing paid vacations and, most important, the forty-hour week.

This agreement—providing collective bargaining, union rights, the election of union delegates on the shop floor, and higher pay—was known as the accord Matignon. It represented the culmination of the social legislation of the Third Republic.^[36] The CGT justifiably viewed it as a great victory for the Confédération; and one of its delegates reported that the employers had yielded on all points.^[37] By contrast, employers in traditional sectors such as textiles and many small businessmen opposed the accord; their disappointment and even outrage at the agreement provoked a strong reaction against the Popular Front and a desire for unity among employers.^[38] Yet management of larger enterprises generally regarded the agreement as the best settlement that could be obtained at a time when over one million workers were occupying factories and firms throughout France. The employers hoped that collective bargaining would stabilize industry.^[39] According to C. J. Gignoux, who became head of the CGPF after the signing of the agreement, “the obligation of collective bargaining contracts could soften certain shocks and permit the resolution of many questions that, if regulated precipitously, would provoke serious disorder.”^[40] Many on the Left believed that a collective contract could limit the “abusive” and “arbitrary” authority of the employers.^[41]

The demand for recognition of elected union delegates also received wide support among several ideological currents within the CGT and even backing from certain employers. Well before the Popular Front, Albert Thomas had believed that delegates could help improve production and protect workers’ interests. M. Chambelland, the leader of the small group of revolutionary syndicalists grouped around the review La Révolution prolétarienne, called for workers’ delegates to prevent management’s disregard of contracts and aid workers’ participation in hiring and firing.^[42] Jouhaux also endorsed the institution of union delegates on the shop floor. Some of the more progressive managements believed that union representatives could prevent disorder by resolving friction between workers and employers over wages, working conditions, and the presentation of grievances; others felt that the introduction of union delegates might become the starting point for some form of productive workers’ participation.^[43]

Whereas some bourgeois could agree with union officials on the potential benefits of union representation, collective bargaining, pay raises for the lowest-paid personnel, and even limited paid vacations, management differed sharply from labor over the forty-hour week. Almost all employers objected that the forty-hour week would drastically raise costs and put them at a disadvantage with foreign competitors. Thus, the assertion by the economist Alfred Sauvy that the French bourgeoisie was relatively unconcerned about the effects of the forty-hour week is questionable. Well before the Popular Front, employers fervently opposed the shorter week. In January 1933, three thousand employers’ organizations resolved to combat the “peril” of the forty-hour week.^[44] In 1935 C. J. Gignoux protested when the International Labor Conference approved the forty-hour proposal. Numerous bosses, their representatives, and their organizations blasted the shortened workweek in the strongest possible terms; the presidents of the chambers of commerce, for example, desired to “regenerate production by faith in labor”: “The French working-class as a whole must rediscover the desire to work, which previously penetrated the entire population and which permitted, after the disasters of 1870 and the trials of the Great War, admirable recoveries.”^[45] In June and July 1936 Economie nouvelle, the publication of the Fédération des industriels et commerçants français, declared that the forty-hour week would ruin small and medium-sized firms. The owners of small firms sometimes belonged to or often voted for the Radical party, which held the key to parliamentary majorities of this period. The alienation of these employers from the leftist coalition would put increasing pressure on the Radical party to abandon the Popular Front. The bourgeoisie—owners of firms small and big—resisted the forty-hour week probably more than any other demand.

French industrialists and many economists objected that the shortage of skilled workers would cause a serious bottleneck for French production if the forty-hour week were imposed too rigorously. The lack of qualified personnel, employers asserted, would block a key goal of the forty-hour week—the hiring of the unemployed. In 1937 a St.-Etienne metallurgist who supplied Renault commented that “it is out of the question for us to create additional jobs or to work during vacations since our region lacks specialists and cannot recruit enough to establish such jobs.”^[46] Yet the union position on the forty-hour week did reflect a deeply rooted attitude held by many workers who, as in Spain, wanted to defend their unemployed comrades by sharing the limited work available. Wage earners went on strike even during the depression in solidarity with their laid-off or dismissed colleagues.^[47] Solidarity strikes would increase after the electoral victory of the Popular Front.

Even if the CGT discourse on unemployment echoed working-class sentiment, it ignored the character of the aviation industry and other sectors. These industries depended on a considerable percentage of skilled workers who, because of the French demographic situation and the insufficiency of retraining programs, were in short supply. Thus the unemployed, most of them either old or unskilled, could not easily be employed in the many skilled jobs in aviation and other industries. Industrialists also feared that competition for the limited supply of qualified workers would raise wages dramatically; in dozens of letters, management complained of the “enticing away” of skilled workers by state-run firms that would offer higher pay and better benefits.^[48]

In addition to opposing strenuously the shortened week, many employers objected to the size of the wage increases that Prime Minister Blum had arbitrated. Nevertheless, the Popular Front in general and the Blum government in particular believed that the augmentations were an essential element of the theory of pouvoir d’achat. The Left thought that the amplified buying power of the workers, with the reemployment of the jobless, would expand consumption and stimulate the economy, as the Popular Front’s program intended. Higher demand would create economies of scale that would reduce costs per unit produced; renewed activity and the prospect of increased profits would encourage investment. Thus, higher-paid workers would be able to purchase lower-priced goods, and the economy would move out of the stagnation that had characterized it since the decade’s beginning. Yet there was one catch: production had to increase if the plan was to succeed. Growth of goods and services could come only from increased investment and hard work.

Investment may have decreased nationally because of investors’ reluctance to keep their money in France during periods of left-wing governments, the legendary mur d’argent.^[49] In the industries examined in detail here, however, the effects of this wall of money seem marginal. At Renault the pace of investment into modernizing machinery increased in 1936–1937 but slowed down in 1938. Massive state funds flowed into nationalized aviation firms in 1938.^[50] No lack of investment seems to have marked Parisian construction; indeed, the state committed large sums for the World’s Fair.^[51] In these three key industries, hard work, not capital, was in particularly short supply in the Paris region during the Popular Front governments.

Officially and publicly, the Popular Front coalition assumed that workers would labor hard and even more diligently in return for higher pay and advanced social legislation. Yet after the long years of the depression of the 1930s—which often meant a quicker pace of production, a greater threat of unemployment, and decreased mobility—workers were ready to take advantage of the shifting balance of power. The forty-hour week meant a real change in everyday lives, and workers would struggle to maintain it throughout the Popular Front. Furthermore, at whatever cost to productivity, most workers wanted to divide the forty-hour week into five days of eight hours, resulting in two free days.^[52] Perhaps these workers perceived more lucidly than the politicians that the Popular Front was a fleeting opportunity whose benefits must be quickly reaped. Indeed, in certain factories where increases of productivity had been matched by pay hikes, management feared that “sure enough, at the first opportunity, the workers will ask that this salary level be preserved and proclaim that the work that they perform is excessive and must be reduced without diminishing their standard of living.”^[53]

According to industrialists, workers thus adapted their conception of a fair or moral wage to the new political and social climate of the Popular Front. The employers’ assertion meshed with the findings of the French sociologist M. Halbwachs, who concluded that workers’ salaries in the early 1930s were determined not so much by basic needs but rather by habit and custom. Habit prevented workers’ standard of living from descending but not from climbing.^[54] Even during the deflation of the depression, when real wages generally rose for the employed, workers would strike to defend their nominal wages.^[55]

There was absolutely no assurance that higher wages, shorter working week, and paid vacations would guarantee increased or even normal productivity. Indeed, given the long history of French workers’ resistance to labor, the assumption of stable productivity was problematic. Studies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century workers have shown the importance of sabotage, lateness, drunkenness, theft, slowdowns, struggles against piecework, and insubordination.^[56] In addition to these, absenteeism and unauthorized absences have been documented before World War I. Of the interwar period, less is known; in the 1930s, France’s political and economic stability relative to its Iberian neighbor seems to have tempered workers’ resistance to work. Instances of turnover and lateness declined, and workers became enracinés, more reluctant to change jobs or regions. The 1930s saw the stabilization of the working class after the destabilization of the 1920s.^[57]

Yet slowdowns and faked illnesses remained favored tactics. In 1932 tense relations between construction workers and their foremen sparked work slowdowns, dismissals, and a violent confrontation between the two groups.^[58] Renault workers practiced the macadam, a tactic in which a worker would find several witnesses to testify, falsely, that he had been injured on the job and would then take off several days at the bosses’ expense.^[59] In the 1930s, the French automaker attempted to stymie workers’ efforts to fake illnesses or to find a permissive doctor who would allow them to remain on sick leave longer than management desired: “If we take care of our own insurance,…it is absolutely necessary that the insured are treated, as far as possible, by our own doctors. We must flush out the shady doctors so that our workers are not cared for in clinics where they are frequently taken advantage of at our expense.”^[60]

On the Renault shop floor strict surveillance, including turnstiles and identity cards, was established to reduce theft and pilfering. Certain firms regularly frisked their personnel. Workers protested against this discipline and often referred to the factory as Devil’s Island or the bagne (convict prison), as others had done in the nineteenth century. Nor was resistance to labor limited to blue-collar workers. In the spring of 1931 Renault reported that delays in accounting were partially caused by employees, of whom “the majority work irregularly and waste a good deal of time when starting a job and when leaving it. The time devoted to preparation and arranging is enormous.”^[61]

Refusals to labor were not unknown among the unemployed, whom the Popular Front wished to reemploy. To avoid accepting an offer from the placement bureau, the jobless would sometimes exaggerate their physical defects and health problems to convince potential employers not to hire them.^[62] This tactic permitted individuals to claim that it was management who had refused their services and thus enabled them to keep their unemployment insurance. The longer they remained on the dole, the more difficult it was to accept retraining. Many would decline a position, if it meant moving to a new city. Parisian workers refused to be enticed by guarantees of housing, transportation allowances, and bonuses to “return to the farm” or even to their native province. Married couples were particularly reluctant to depart. By 1936 unemployed Parisians remained resolutely urban and rooted in what some French intellectuals considered a rootless environment.

To eliminate fraud, the placement bureau would summon the unemployed at the normal hours of their trade. For example, it convoked bakers early in the morning; this procedure “appreciably” reduced their numbers. Sudden convocation or unannounced visits also occurred. Inspectors could even interview former employers. Some patrons would collaborate with their personnel to swindle officials. A few managers were known to permit workers to leave the firm so they could keep appointments with the employment bureau. One building entrepreneur who had gone bankrupt encouraged his laborers to register for unemployment assistance by paying them the difference between their former salaries and the amount they received from the government. However, only a minority of the jobless attempted to deceive the authorities. In 1930, 65 percent of the unemployed were able to prove that their right to assistance was justified. By 1935, with rising unemployment touching previously unaffected sectors of the working class, the figure had climbed to 91 percent. Yet large numbers of workers were capable of violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the regulations. Parisian metalworkers, when waiting for their strikes to end, would register en masse as jobless workers so they could obtain compensation. In 1934, “given the evidence of [these] violations,” the rules were changed to prevent the practice. If found guilty of fraud, the convicted could be fined or imprisoned.

In changed economic and political circumstances, resistance to labor could easily flourish, as it had before the depression when turnover and lateness were more prevalent. Given this pattern, it is not surprising that despite the signing of the Matignon Agreements on 8 June and Blum’s commitment to obtain legislative approval for the forty-hour week and paid vacations, work remained halted in many factories and workshops. Although the CGT endorsed the accord, it was unable to end the sit-down strikes immediately in the Paris region. Again, this failure indicated that the movement was spontaneous or, at least, not entirely under the control of the CGT: “In effect, the strikes broke out in those sectors where the organizations capable of provoking them were the weakest. This is true of the CGT, which was completely outmaneuvered (débordée).”^[63]

However unplanned and unsuspected their commencement, the occupations immediately offered important responsibilities to union militants and elected officials of the Left. Their implantation in the Parisian suburbs during the interwar period proved decisive in certain sit-down strikes. During the occupations, the Metallurgical Employers’ Association (Groupement des industries métallurgiques, or GIM) complained of “interference” not only by CGT delegates but also by Communist and Socialist elected officials.^[64] A Catholic academy in Vanves—whose board of directors included Cardinal Verdier, the archbishop of Paris—had eight hundred students who were largely from “modest families of the Paris region.” On 26 June approximately fifty workers occupied its kitchen. The strikers received “real encouragement from the Issy municipality, which had a Communist mayor who fed them and persuaded them to hold out until victory. The older personnel would give in readily but are carried along by the young.”^[65] The school administration accepted the workers’ demand for higher pay but refused to recognize the union. The police superintendent feared that if he used force to end the occupation, the working-class commune might react violently.

With the help of many municipalities, activists in the occupied factories organized concerts, dances, sports, games, and films. CGT militants presented workers’ demands and sometimes insisted that the forty-hour week, paid vacations, and higher salaries not only be legislated at the national level but also be inscribed in collective bargaining agreements at the local level. At Renault the Communist deputy Costes reminded the management that the workers wanted the forty-hour week and paid vacations to be included in their contract: “The workers prefer, in spite of all the advantages that an eventual law might grant them, the signing of a collective bargaining agreement that has the power of a law between the two parties: Renault management and the workers.”^[66]

Many, if not most, historians have attributed the end of the May and June strikes to the influence of the speech that Maurice Thorez, the leader of the French PCF, gave to party militants on 11 June 1936. While praising the order and discipline of the Parisian proletariat, the Communist leader argued:

We do not yet have behind us, with us, ready to go with us to the end, the people of the countryside. We are risking the estrangement of sections of the bourgeoisie and peasantry that are somewhat sympathetic. What then?…then it is necessary to know how to end a strike once satisfaction has been obtained.^[67]

Yet Thorez’s influence even at Renault, where the PCF claimed to have great strength, seems to have been limited. On 5 June, the day on which Thorez told the militants not to scare “the bourgeoisie and the peasants of France,” damage at Renault began.^[68] Although little destruction had occurred during the strike’s first days, a “mean spirit” appeared among the workers on 11 June under the pretext of a delay in signing the collective bargaining agreement.^[69] After 11 June there was a “new situation, characterized by the violence of the strikers.” Raw materials were “voluntarily defiled and rendered unusable,” from which Renault claimed 161,201 francs of damage, a considerable sum. Windows were broken “either voluntarily or involuntarily,” and thousands of francs’ worth of items disappeared, including clocks, tools, and equipment of all sorts. Assembly-line workers sometimes refused requests by their foremen to complete the work at hand. In one case the superintendent (chef d’atelier) demanded that workers grease unfinished doors that would rust if left untreated, but the workers “categorically refused” to carry out the order. Management later spent 8,379 francs to eliminate the rust. Workers used this destruction to wring concessions from the Renault management.

Most historians have stressed the workers’ calm, order, and respect for both people and property during the occupations. In many firms machines and materials were protected, and management was left untouched. The workers of the Paris region did not wish to destroy the machines and factories on which they depended for their livelihood. Nonetheless, as at Renault, in several other firms during the occupations damage to property did occur. At one electronics firm (Alsthom), telephone wires were cut.^[70] At the Fa;ad fiencerie de Choisy-le-Roi, theft and damage were reported. The Metallurgical Employers’ Association announced threats of sabotage by workers in two firms and estimated potential damage at a minimum of 200,000 francs. In two other companies, workers threatened to extinguish furnaces, which, if accomplished, would have cost the concerns hundreds of thousands of francs. Industrialists reported some damage, usually caused by workers who abruptly stopped production or who used up supplies of raw materials during the occupations.^[71] In this context of petty theft, subtle sabotage, and intimidation, union representatives in fourteen factories warned that workers would run the rms themselves if their demands were not met.^[72]

There was also a limited amount of violence. At a number of firms in the Paris region, managers were forcibly conned and supervisory personnel were not permitted to enter the factories. Several foremen and executives were physically searched, verbally abused, and threatened with death.^[73] Foremen were particularly detested by their underlings; some were expelled from factories.^[74] A CGT declaration on 2 June stating that employers “must be free to enter and leave their firms” was either ignored or disobeyed. At Renault, administrative personnel who were “guarded as hostages” became involved in fights with other workers.

However, when shop-floor delegates’ demands were satisfied and collective bargaining agreements signed, the sit-downs and strikes gradually ended, often with the government’s mediation. Regardless of the fears of many and the hopes of few, revolution did not occur. In many branches, wage earners made great gains. For example, on 12 June a contract in construction established an eight-hour day, restricted overtime, and abolished the tâcheronnat.^[75] Teams with rotating assignment of workers were to perform nightwork, and the union achieved increased control of hiring.

On Bastille Day when the strike wave was nearly over, Benoît Frachon, a Communist CGT leader, told a rally of forty thousand that the workers had returned or would return to the factories with greater class consciousness.^[76] The following chapter shows that this consciousness manifested itself in modes remarkably similar to those of Spanish workers during the Revolution in Barcelona.

Notes