The Parisian construction industry, especially the large projects like the extension of the métro, the building of a stadium, and the erection of the exposition for the 1937 World’s Fair, exhibited problems similar to those of the aviation and automotive industries. Yet the construction firms’ smaller size may have made their struggles over the length of the working day, overtime, output, CGT control of hiring, and discipline even more violent than in other industries. As has been seen, the May and June strike movements, which began in metallurgy, quickly affected construction workers who demanded an ambitious program of public works, the forty-hour week, improved working conditions, an end to overtime, the limitation of piecework, and the abolition of the tâcheronnat. Workers and their unions were particularly concerned with job security in a sector where structural and seasonal unemployment affected 23 percent of the work force in February 1936. Yet even after many demands were granted, agitation persisted. The May and June movements created a new social situation in which productivity and output dropped significantly on construction sites. At the beginning of October 1936 in a conversation with Joseph Caillaux, the president of the control commission of the World’s Fair (exposition) of 1937, M. Labbé, who was the commissioner for the exposition, noted that since the “events” of the spring, workers had lost their eagerness (ardeur) to work and had engaged in slowdown strikes (grèves perlées).^[121] Labbé doubted that the exposition could open on the scheduled date of 1 May 1937, and he appointed two CGT representatives to boost the work effort. In the second half of 1936 and in 1937, almost all firms still complained of “the insufficiency of workers’ output.”^[122] Laborers took twice as long to complete certain jobs in 1937 as they had early in 1936.^[123] A letter from the Minister of Commerce and Industry declared that if output between February and May 1936 had been maintained, a job that actually required 264,700 hours to complete could have been finished in only 78,710 hours.^[124] Piecework was effectively ended on many construction sites, and employers lamented that their personnel had lost “le goût du travail.”^[125] The Rapport général, presented by Commissioner Labbé in 1938, declared that the exposition’s most serious difficulty was “the slowing down of output,” which resulted from “an impairment of the willingness, of the conscientiousness of the labor” of the building workers.^[126] Before May 1936 many projects were one month ahead of schedule, whereas by December 1936 delays of five months were reported.

Companies that were extending the métro and building a stadium in the suburbs experienced similar declines in output and productivity. In October 1937 the management of the métro extension to the Gare d’Austerlitz contrasted “the frame of mind of 1934, when the tendency was to increase output, with the frame of mind of 1936.”^[127] In the fall of 1936, the masons quit work early and engaged in slowdown strikes that reduced output 90 to 95 percent. Many workers increased their snack time from ten to thirty minutes.^[128] Output dropped approximately 37 percent and even further as “our workers began to foresee the completion of certain jobs and, consequently, layoffs.” The enterprises charged with the construction of the stadium at St.-Cloud finished in March 1938 instead of July 1937, as originally planned.^[129] Bricklayers needed 256 hours to complete a chimney that should have taken only 123 hours.^[130] Employers complained that workers took longer to dress, undress, eat, go to the toilet, and take a break.

The rapid fall of productivity can be partially attributed to the climate of disobedience that reigned at the construction sites. Workers were able to defy the normal industrial chain of command without fear of reprisals. According to Usine, at the World’s Fair, “no one” was “able to command, not the bosses, not the government, not the unions.”^[131] On many construction sites at the exposition the employers’ authority had disappeared, but the question of the union’s authority was more complex. Although workers often disobeyed or ignored high-ranking CGT leaders, lower-ranking union delegates did exercise considerable power at the fair and at other large construction projects where they controlled both hiring and speed of production. An exposition administrator testified that “during the entire project, a day did not pass without the site being disturbed by the arrival (during working hours) of CGT officials and delegates who set up meetings, gave orders, and organized production.”^[132] Other unions charged that the CGT monopolized the exposition and constantly violated their right to organize on other construction sites in the Paris region. In July 1936 the secretary of the Masons’ Union asked his delegates to check the union cards of workers who had been in arrears for a significant time (“depuis trois assemblées générales”), implying that construction workers were reluctant to pay dues. If behind in payments, members were to be sent to the union hall before they started their jobs.^[133]

In August, Albert Bedouce, the Socialist Minister of Public Works, wrote a warning to Blum.

On a certain number of sites the contractors cannot complete their projects because of a significant decrease in workers’ output. I have been informed that in some trades the decline of output stems from methodical acts by delegates. I cannot believe that they are legitimate representatives of working-class organizations. I think that under these circumstances it is indispensable to ask the CGT to intervene immediately through the representatives of the Fédération du bâtiment so that the decline of output—which nothing can justify—does not prevent the execution of the government’s plan [of public works for the unemployed]. Action is even more urgent since I have been told that employers’ organizations, in order to finish work in progress, would be willing to accept contracts that limit output. This output, even if higher than presently, would be much lower than before the recent [social] legislation.^[134]

Early in 1937, Prime Minister Blum sent his right-hand man, Jules Moch, to deal with the chaotic situation at the World’s Fair, which was becoming an acute embarrassment to the CGTsupported government. In March 1937 Moch endorsed the de facto control of the CGT over many sites and “counseled hiring by the unions in order to avoid incidents.”^[135] The Socialist government evidently believed that it would be more fruitful to work with the CGT, not against it, in the battle to finish the exposition on schedule. The PCF and the CGT were also anxious to have the fair open on its 1 May scheduled date in order not to embarrass the Popular Front. La Vie ouvrière asserted that all comrades wished for the success of the fair, and R. Arrachard, the secretary general of the Fédération du bâtiment, declared that the exposition “must be…and will be ready on the first of May.”^[136]Syndicats, the anti-Communist rival of La Vie ouvrière, wanted the World’s Fair to be renamed the exposition de travail instead of the exposition des arts et techniques and stated that it would open on 1 May. The Communists also asserted that the construction must be accelerated and that the project must be inaugurated on its planned date.^[137] Writing in Humanité, H. Raynaud, secretary of the Union des syndicats ouvriers de la région parisienne, was certain that “the Parisian workers” were “capable of finishing the fair on the determined date” (italics in original). On 12 February the Communist journalist Paul Vaillant-Couturier assured his readers that “the exposition will open 1 May. It will be a holiday of work.” In March the CGT leader, Toudic, formulated the slogan, The World’s Fair is a battle of the workers and of the Popular Front against fascism and the bosses.

Yet, as in Barcelona, despite published appeals production lagged, and on 1 February 1937 the major leaders of the Popular Front gathered to address the assembled workers of the World’s Fair. Blum declared, “The exposition will be the triumph of the working class, the Popular Front, and liberty. It will show that a democratic regime is superior to dictatorship.…The reputation of the Popular Front is at stake, and I tell you frankly that work on Saturday and Sunday is necessary.”^[138] Léon Jouhaux, the head of the CGT, told the crowd that “sacrifices must be made.” Marcel Gitton, one of the PCF’s top officials, addressed the audience: “The exposition will open 1 May, the day of the fête du travail. Its success will be a factor in the strengthening of the Popular Front. The fair will be a victory of thousands of workers and all the laboring masses. The enemies of the Popular Front yearn for the failure of the exposition. The workers want it to be an unprecedented success.”

Regardless of the pleas and exhortations of the leaders, the exposition opened far behind schedule. The CGT refused to lengthen the forty-hour week. Thus, two or three shifts per day had to be organized, and the output of these additional shifts declined significantly for several reasons. First, the shortage of skilled laborers led to the hiring of inexperienced workers for the second and third shifts. The CGT wholeheartedly endorsed this practice and even forbade employers to utilize some of their most qualified personnel who did not belong to the union. Of the four cement workers one firm was forced to hire, only one had real experience.^[139] Much of the work completed by the second and third shifts was poorly executed and often had to be redone. Second, the night shift had inherent difficulties with lighting, and its abnormal schedule was typically much less productive than the day shifts. Third, the unions opposed the use of technical advances and preferred manual techniques in order to create jobs; they refused, for instance, to operate spray-painting machines.^[140]

Although high-ranking CGT officials promised that work on Saturday and Sunday would be permitted within the framework of the forty-hour week, in practice CGT delegates at the exposition largely banned weekend work. Delegates and workers ignored pleas from both the CGT and Humanité that weekend work was necessary to open the fair on time. Several weeks after Blum’s speech, a carpenters’ delegate insisted that no work be done on Saturday and Sunday.^[141] The painters of the American pavilion were denied permission to work Saturday and Sunday; shortly afterward, an electric transformer was damaged, presumably to protect the right to a work-free weekend.^[142] According to the official report of the exposition, the union leaders were unable to “deliver” on their promises of weekend labor: “Even when an understanding [on weekend work] was reached…the following Saturday a counterorder, frequently inexplicable, prohibited the shifts from entering the sites.”^[143] In addition, workers refused to recover days lost to inclement weather or holidays that occurred during the working week.^[144]

CGT delegates often set production quotas and limited piecework. Many of the workers, hired through the CGT’s bourse du travail, had little interest in improving their output. It was quite difficult to fire these wage earners because of the power of the union and the administration’s fear of incidents, which sometimes did occur. When the management of the Algerian exhibit dismissed nine roofers, workers retaliated by occupying the site, despite the presence of police.^[145] Officials then decided to keep the dismissed laborers on the job. Although Arrachard, secretary general of the Fédération du bâtiment, claimed that he intervened frequently so that workers would produce normally, his interventions seem to have been ineffective.^[146] On 13 May 1937, almost two weeks after the scheduled opening date had passed, Jules Moch told Arrachard that the “comedy had gone on long enough,” and that order must be restored.^[147] In June 1937 Moch threatened to “go public” and tell the press that the union was responsible for the delays if work on the museums were not quickly completed. Some foreign nations attempted to employ non-French workers to finish their pavilions, but the CGT effectively opposed not only this practice but even the hiring of provincial French workers.^[148] The Americans wanted to finish their pavilion by 4 July, their Independence Day, and they concluded a contract with a Belgian firm to finish a metal roof because of the “impossibility of obtaining a sufficient output from French workers.”^[149] With the agreement of the exposition’s labor inspector, however, the CGT demanded the hiring of a certain number of its workers. These newly employed French laborers “have only disorganized the [construction] site and discouraged the Belgian workers by their absolute inactivity, resembling a slowdown strike.” The erection of the roof took twice as much time as planned. When provincial workers were employed, Parisian unions insisted that they return to the provinces immediately after the building was finished.^[150]

Struggles over the control of hiring, production rhythms, and weekend work produced a climate of violence at the exposition and other construction sites. The tense atmosphere is easy to understand since workers and union delegates consistently undermined the authority of employers and their foremen; moreover, many employers at the exposition headed small firms and could not afford the cost overruns that higher salaries, low productivity, and CGT control of hiring entailed. One particularly combative employer, Jules Verger, had dismissed a shop steward and had apparently ignored the collective bargaining agreement. When his firm was hit by a strike, he asserted that the fair had become a “revolutionary experiment.” “Since last October [1936], I have been fighting against the revolutionary unions. These last ten months have been marred by a thousand incidents of various kinds. The majority of my [construction] sites have been attacked and sometimes sabotaged.”^[151] Arbitrators condemned these violations of the right to work and agreed that the chantiers of Verger and Delporte must be protected by the authorities.^[152] Verger, later to become a militant pétainiste, reported that nearly finished work was sabotaged at the Pavillon des vins.

On construction sites other than Verger’s, CGT members physically prevented non-union personnel from working and obstructed their legal right to work. Sometimes police were called to protect non-union personnel; certain workers even carried arms on the job.^[153] At a stadium construction site in St.-Cloud, a worker knifed his foreman.^[154] The World’s Fair of 1937 opened on 24 May with much work incomplete, two and one-half months behind schedule; the CGT finally inaugurated its own pavilion, the Maison du travail, on 1 July 1937, two months late.^[155]

Publicly, the Popular Front coalition attempted to ignore the workers’ reduced productivity, violence, and struggles against work. According to the Left, the bosses were to blame for delays and production problems in the industries examined. The Communists, the CGT, and even the Socialists charged innumerable times in their publications that fascist bosses were sabotaging production to damage the Popular Front and deliver the nation to Hitler and Mussolini. Syndicats accused employers of staging work slow-downs in a “deceitful struggle” against the Popular Front.^[156]Humanité declared that Renault workers only wanted to work, and Le Populaire charged that the goal of the bosses was to slow down and sabotage production. These charges were largely polemical; the bosses and the “two hundred families”—the Radical slogan for the wealthiest families in supposed control of the French economy—were a convenient symbol. Undoubtedly some businessmen and cautious savers did export their capital, but as yet little evidence exists to sustain accusations that the French bourgeoisie, perhaps the founder of modern nationalism, willingly sabotaged its own industries for the benefit of foreign powers.

The Left’s charges and its ideology of sabotage and conspiracy by the bosses or the 200 families hid the structural problems of boring, repetitive, and sometimes dangerous wage labor in a modern industrial society. Even with regard to the World’s Fair, the Left continued its triumphant discourse. Significantly, the CGT’s pavilion was named la maison du travail.

[It is] eminently representative of the entire conception of the French union movement. [The working class] will continue to be at home in the maison du travail. Workers from all over the world will be coming to Paris, and all the visitors will discover there a specifically working-class environment.…They will not be able to avoid the conclusion that a new world is being built and that a new civilization, based on work, is being created under our eyes.^[157]

With few exceptions, the Left refused to admit that work discipline sometimes collapsed amid the new social situation created by the May and June strikes and the inauguration of the more lenient Popular Front governments. This new social environment encouraged workers’ defiance of management and sometimes even of the union. It was usually not bosses but workers who refused weekend work, who were inexperienced in their jobs, who defied authority, and who often slowed production. After the war, Léon Blum criticized workers at the exposition and in armaments for refusing overtime and decreasing productivity. He asserted that workers should have risen above a backward and egoistic patronat and, by laboring hard, set an example for the entire nation.^[158]

Like their Barcelonan counterparts, Parisian wage earners continued to avoid workspace and struggled to lessen worktime during their Popular Front. Direct and indirect resistance persisted under the governments of the Left. Perhaps the most fundamental and difficult problems for the Popular Fronts came not from their declared enemies but from those they purportedly represented. An analysis of the Left’s encounter with popular and more specifically working-class culture continues in the next chapter.