The Campaign to Extend the Contract

French labor law empowered the government to determine how broadly a collective agreement could apply within an industry. Though it rarely occurred, the labor minister could extend the geographical, sectoral, and occupational reach of a contract.^[55] On 13 May 1938 the FTM sent a letter

to the labor minister urging just such an action in hopes of extending the contract and the Jacomet ruling to the engine and accessory sectors: "In our opinion it is indisputable that aircraft engines cannot be used in any other industry and that an aircraft engine cannot be separated from an airframe since it is precisely the combination of these two objects which alone permits an airplane to fly." The letter went on "to refute the theory of the Chambre Syndicale des Moteurs which claims there is a perfect analogy between building airplane engines and building automobile engines." The FTM attacked this position on the basis of workers' experience: "to build aircraft engines required specialized and highly trained people [who] up to now have needed references from within this industry to get hired."^[56] The engine and accessory sectors, militants argued, were as much a part of the industry as the airframe sector and hence should fall within the jurisdiction of the contract. Since the contract named the engine sector specifically as a party to the agreement, the FTM found it self-evident that the document should apply.^[57]

The call for extension provoked a chorus of protest from employers. From official pronouncements at the UIMM to the angry outcries of individual entrepreneurs in towns like Vierzon and Châteauroux, employers lent their voices to a lobbying effort that went on for weeks. Letters flooded into the Labor Ministry from the provinces, especially from regions where aircraft plants had sprung up and expanded since the late 1920s.^[58] Amid the clamor of protest three forms of attack against the contract emerged. The first came from the engine builders themselves, who insisted on how little they had in common with airframe manufacturers and how closely they resembled other branches in metalworking.^[59] Accessory firms made a second kind of argument. Since many of them manufactured equipment for clients outside aviation, they loathed a contract that required wages applying to the aircraft industry but not to the other branches in which they had to compete. The notion of paying some employees aircraft wages and others a lower metalworking rate angered them all the more, for a dual wage schedule would surely invite labor unrest.^[60] Many employers warned that the contract would drive them out of the aircraft sector altogether.

The third attack against the idea of extension came from employers who feared the impact the contract might have beyond the aircraft industry. In Bayonne, for example, metalworking employers so dreaded the pressure aircraft wage rates would exert in their region that they managed to rally the local Chamber of Commerce to their cause. Chamber officials wrote the labor minister an impassioned plea not to extend the contract to the new Latécoère plant in their area lest it trigger labor conflict in nearby metalworker establishments, raise prices, and eventually cause an economic catastrophe for a region already devasted by the collapse of its tourist trade on account of the Spanish civil war.^[61] The fear

of the new wages in aircraft was no less severe in Toulouse, Bordeaux, Pau, and many other cities and towns where employers convened to send pleas to Paris. In Châteauroux metalworking employers went to great lengths to document the sources of their hysteria, contending that the local wages at SNCASO exceeded those in metalworking, textiles, and building construction by 70, 85, and 112 percent respectively.^[62] Even farmers in this region condemned the contract loudly enough to move the prefect to write the labor minister that "agricultural workers see aircraft workers, especially the unskilled, earning very high wages while often working under less harsh conditions and lacking special skills, since a large number of them are in fact recruited from the ranks of domestic workers on farms."^[63] Because aircraft firms were paying their employees relatively well and expanding their ranks, fear spread that employers everywhere would be forced to bid up their wages. Anxiety and self-interest quickly created an impressive array of supporters for a cause that had initially sprung from the narrow concerns of the four largest engine-building firms.

Faced with such protest, how did state officials respond? In the corridors of the ministries opinions differed over how to proceed, and for three months ambivalence and disagreement prevailed. Some prefects and Air Ministry officials were inclined to agree with employers who feared the impact that aircraft wages might have on local labor markets.^[64] Naval officials, moreover, complained that the contract would lure metalworkers from the shipyards into the aircraft domain.^[65] Still, a number of officials saw merit in extending the contract. Although Daladier and La Chambre had no desire to trigger a scramble for higher wages in the metalworking sector, they considered Plan V an overriding priority and viewed the contract as a desirable instrument for stabilizing the airframe and engine sectors. Moreover, some employers concurred, namely the heads of nationalized firms, men still smarting from the schism in the Union Syndicale. In their view article 1 of the contract had made it perfectly clear that engine builders, as well as firms with departments working exclusively in aviation, were obliged to adhere to the agreement.^[66] Though the Union Syndicale officially remained silent on the issue, it was no doubt apparent that extension might remove the greatest source of antagonism among employers and allow them to tighten their ranks. In addition, a few prefects, especially those in the Cher and the Seine-et-Oise, had witnessed the battles of the industry locally and came out clearly for extension.^[67] Labor, in short, had a number of allies in the contest over extension, albeit allies with motives of their own.

The CGT was fortunate, too, to find a labor minister in the cabinet who did not blanch at the thought of imposing an innovative contract on a group of recalcitrant employers. Paul Ramadier had left the Socialist

Party to join Pierre Renaudel in the "neo-Socialist" heresy in 1933. But unlike some of his colleagues in the group, Ramadier retained enough sympathy for labor and industrial reform to see the virtue of extending the contract. He was also a careful politician, and recognizing how volatile the issue had become, he turned to the National Economic Council for advice.^[68] When this quasi-governmental body of labor, business, and administrative representatives found itself too divided to issue a clear opinion, lobbying intensified at the Ministry of Labor. On 4 August Doury, Charrière, Jourdain, Duhamel, and Laborie met with Ramadier to reiterate the CGT's case for extension.^[69] When Ramadier issued his decree the next day, their efforts were rewarded: the government officially extended the contract of April 1938 to the engine sector and to accessory firms that fell within the rubric of article 1. Suddenly another twenty thousand workers in the industry had a favorable contract that renegade employers now had to uphold. Though Ramadier did not extend the contract up the occupational hierarchy to include engineers—a move ultimately more threatening to employer interests than sectoral extension—his decree was perceived as a stunning victory for labor. CGT officials, however, took care to acclaim it as a victory for the national interest, not simply for workers. "[We] believe," Jourdain wrote in the labor press, "that the implementation of this agreement can only have positive repercussions on the rational development of production in factories where aircraft engines are built. Several months have now shown this to be the case in the airframe firms."^[70] All along, aircraft militants had described extension as an asset for rearmament, and as the Czech crisis mounted, no one was tempted to gloat publicly over the victory.

Labor's triumph in the extension battle, however, was short-lived. Scarcely had Ramadier issued his decree when Edouard Daladier suddenly decided to challenge the most important symbol of labor reform from June 1936—the forty-hour week, which was still in force in metalworking generally, if not in the aircraft industry itself. Several factors converged by late summer 1938 that encouraged Daladier to make this move. The emerging Czech crisis had forced the government to reconsider its readiness for war. Reports during the summer from the ministries of National Defense and Labor revealed how few skilled workers could be found in the ranks of the unemployed and hence how important it was to expand the workweek.^[71] And Daladier felt under continuing political pressure to placate employer groups lobbying for a reversal in labor policy. On the evening of 21 August Daladier declared in a radio address that "as long as the international situation remains so delicate, it will be necessary to work more than forty hours and up to forty-eight hours in defense plants. In the face of authoritarian states that arm

themselves without any consideration for work time, is France going to waste its time on things like that?"^[72] This speech was a pivotal moment for the country, for by attacking labor's sacrosanct forty-hour week, Daladier, who for months had vacillated between maintaining the illusion of a Popular Front and tilting toward the right for political support, finally made it clear that he wanted to rein in unions and restore business confidence in his regime.^[73] Two days later, Ramadier resigned from the Labor Ministry, and Daladier promptly replaced him with Charles Pomaret, a tough-minded deputy less inclined toward labor reform. Just when aircraft militants had seemed to win the battle over extension, the political climate had changed.

Daladier's shift in policy evoked particularly strong feelings of resentment in the aircraft industry because workers and technicians had already shown a willingness to be flexible on the work hour question. In fact, as Daladier wrote later, the chief concern of the government at the time was not to lengthen the workweek in the aircraft industry itself but rather to boost production in those private firms supplying raw materials and semifinished goods to the state arsenals and nationalized companies.^[74] Aircraft employers themselves were of mixed minds over the workweek. Although some employers, especially in the engine sector, welcomed an attack on the Popular Front's work time legislation, Henry Potez had approved of the forty-hour week as a way to bring order and predictability to production. In short, the workweek had been negotiable in aviation, at least up to a point. Daladier's attack on "forty hours," however, further polarized the situation. With government taking a firm stance against labor, even Potez changed his opinion: in September, faced with the complexity of organizing mass production for the Potez 63, he joined the ranks of those who opposed the forty-hour week.^[75]

The CGT, not surprisingly, reacted immediately to Daladier's initiative. Four days after Daladier's radio address aircraft technicians from throughout the Paris region gathered at the Maison de la Mutualité to condemn the speech and express "their stupefaction at the ill-timed attack on the forty-hour week to which [workers] are so deeply attached."^[76] Militants criticized employers for failing to comply with the Jacomet ruling and called for a policy restoring the forty-hour week, respecting labor's voice on the supervisory committees of the industry, and implementing procedures that genuinely rationalized the industry. Across town two days later, militants in the Amicales Socialistes held a similar meeting to protest Daladier's policy.^[77] Since CGT militants had been willing to negotiate flexibly over wages and hours in defense industries during the strikes of the previous April, they now felt Daladier's initiative was less a rearmament measure than an assault on the labor movement itself.

Daladier's new policy increased the acrimony between labor and management just at the moment when national unity was badly needed—during the Munich crisis of late September. War appeared so imminent during the heat of the crisis that Daladier felt compelled to mobilize the army, and a sense of panic quickly spilled into the arms industries. On 28 September Albert Caquot instructed all company heads in the nationalized sector to shift to a wartime footing:

Because of the German ultimatums, the factories must function at the maximum. . . . The nationalized factories must, by working next Saturday and Sunday, exemplify an understanding of the national interest. This work in the offices and factories will acquire special meaning from the fact that it is envisioned essentially as a free and spontaneous measure to safeguard the country. Any difficulty in carrying out this order will be reported to me.^[78]

This call for a "spontaneous" sacrifice of the weekend created confusion on the shop floor. Popular patriotism and Communist antifascism, on the one hand, made it difficult for workers to rebuff the request. But on the other, Caquot's appeal for extra hours came on the heels of a new assault on the labor movement. Moreover, because aircraft workers had been working more than forty hours a week since April, they now resented the government's effort to coerce workers without consulting the unions or negotiating a new agreement on hours. On top of it all, when the crisis suddenly abated on Friday, 30 September, with the Four Power Pact, the appeal to work Saturday seemed less compelling. Militants felt torn, as a police informant discerned:

Great confusion reigned yesterday afternoon [Friday] in the trade union world of aviation. During the morning a number of militants had expressed the opinion that in the light of the change in the international situation [i.e. the agreement at Munich], the plans made to work overtime on Saturday were no longer justified. Startled by this development, the aircraft technicians section, which is a part of the metalworking federation, deliberated at length. At 2:30 this group decided to work the next day nonetheless. But this decision provoked vigorous protest. It quickly became clear that the number of defections from this decision would be high. . . . So, late in the evening the technicians reversed their decision from the afternoon. It was decided that today would be a Saturday of rest like all others. The office personnel and the management worked today as usual, while the workers stayed home. In the Bloch factory in Courbevoie 600 office employees and technicians came to work while 1200 workers refused to come. The situation is the same in other aircraft factories.^[79]

Though this report may have exaggerated how many workers refused to work in the industry as a whole—evidence suggests the turnout was better in some plants—it conveyed how difficult it had become to demand sacrifices from a work force now thrown on the defensive by a government many workers felt they could no longer trust.^[80]

Within days after Daladier's return from Munich antagonisms deepened. Trouble broke out first in the large private engine-building firms, where the events of the past months had sown the greatest distrust. At Salmson in Paris management fired a worker, triggering a factory occupation on 6 October. This time, however, police cleared the factory by force, and the company refused to rehire fifty of the more militant strikers. Such reprisals, reminiscent of the early 1930s, inspired workers at Renault, Caudron, and Hispano-Suiza to stage half-hour sitdowns in solidarity with the fired workers.^[81] On Saturday, 8 October, seven hundred of the nine hundred employees at Hispano-Suiza refused to work overtime, even though they had done so the Saturday before. The spirit of cooperation that had prevailed in the industry during the panic of Munich disappeared as the country became more and more polarized between workers and employers, left and right, opponents and supporters of a Daladier regime moving decisively against labor. By 18 October short strikes had erupted at Bréguet in Villacoublay and at Caudron-Renault to protest the attack on the forty-hour week and violations of the contract of April 1938.^[82] In each of these strikes workers and technicians sought to defend what they had gained either in June 1936 or in the national contract of April 1938. The battle over extension had not been won in August after all; it broke out anew on factory floors.

During the first week of November a skirmish took place in the Bouguenais plant of SNCASO on the outskirts of Nantes that demonstrated how the social climate in the industry had deteriorated. Employees there had taken the customary holiday of All Saints' Day, and according to the contract of April 1938, they were obliged to make up the work the following Saturday. Before Daladier's attack on the forty-hour week in August 1938 most employees would probably have cooperated with this arrangement. But now workers had become so sensitive to the notion of conceding extra hours that when shop stewards polled their comrades, only 240 of 1490 employees voted to work the additional day.^[83] This decision brought Ambroise Croizat, general secretary of the FTM, rushing from Paris to warn local militants that a refusal to make up All Saints' Day "would be tantamount to breaking the contract." In fact, plant managers made it clear that employees who had failed to make up for the holiday would now have to reapply for their jobs. Faced with such a reprisal, local militants reexamined their position, convened fifteen hundred employees at a meeting in the local Bourse de Travail, and won unanimous support to negotiate a new chance to make up the work. Management agreed, and conflict subsided, but the damage had been done: workers had shown their reluctance to heed their contractual obligations for overtime, and managers had revealed their willingness to discipline labor harshly.

Meanwhile a juridical struggle had developed that called into question

the status of Ramadier's extension decree of 5 August. The engine manufacturers had refused to concede defeat over the issue and no doubt took heart from Daladier's tough new labor policy. Accordingly, these employers took their case against extension to yet another agency of appeal—the Conseil d'Etat, the highest administrative court in France, a body that under extremely rare circumstances had been known to suspend decrees.^[84]

Once again business, labor, and state officials presented their arguments to a governmental body that stood a step removed from the fray of industrial conflict. The engine manufacturers repeated their critique of the aircraft contract, and CGT officials offered new figures showing how productivity had improved at Gnôme-et-Rhône since the August decree.^[85] The arguments of the two opposing sides had evolved little in the months of conflict, but the lines of battle had changed in one essential respect: the ministries had shifted their stance. Charles Pomaret, the labor minister, made no secret of his antipathy for extension and for the high wages in aircraft generally.^[86] What is more, La Chambre now presented a complex argument that neither defended nor attacked extension but rather implicitly invited the Conseil d'Etat to rule as it pleased.^[87] No leading government official made a formal defense of contract extension. Just how fully the political environment had changed in industrial life since the preceding summer became all the more apparent when Conseil d'Etat issued its ruling: on 12 November it ordered the government to postpone the implementation of the Ramadier decree.^[88]

This decision came as a blow to the CGT, which with few friends in the ministries now had nowhere to turn. The engine manufacturers, of course, were elated; the gamble of schismatic tactics at last was reaping rewards. Though the contest over extension had not ended, its complex course from April to November had exposed to everyone how abruptly the fortunes of labor could change in the wake of Daladier's shift in policy. CGT militants had struggled vigorously to solidify what they had won in the strikes of the previous April. And employers, especially the engine builders, had battled hard to reverse their momentum. At stake had been two visions of labor relations in the industry—on the one hand, a social compact between the CGT and employers, financed through the rearmament budget, embodied in the Jacomet ruling and the national contract, and extended beyond the boundaries of the national companies into the private sector; on the other, a reassertion of the more conventional, autocratic style of management that the engine builders hoped at the very least to preserve in the private sector. At stake, too, were profits—the capacity of employers in the private sector to demand a long workweek of workers without paying them overtime rates, and the capacity of employers outside the airframe sector to ignore the premium

wage rates of the national contract. The final outcome of this contest rested in the hands of a few men—Daladier, Ramadier, Pomaret, La Chambre, and the judges on the Conseil d'Etat—demonstrating once again how important state officials, and especially the politicians, had become in shaping social relations in the industry.