11. Revolts Against Work

After the initial factory occupations in the spring of 1936 had receded, violence, destruction, and disobedience continued. Direct and indirect revolts against work—phenomena almost always present among wage earners—intensified during the French Popular Front governments. Parisian wage earners seem to have increased their resistances, particularly strikes, when the government was led by Léon Blum, prime minister from June 1936 to June 1937 and again from March 1938 to April 1938. After May 1936 many workers took advantage of a relaxation in the military-like labor discipline that had characterized factory life in the early 1930s to arrive late, leave early, miss work, slow down production, and, on occasion, to disobey their superiors in ways that hurt output. As in Barcelona in the months following the electoral victory of the Spanish Popular Front in February 1936, some workers interpreted the alliance against fascism not in terms of politics but of everyday life. For many Parisian workers, fascism became associated with iron discipline on the shop floor, an intensive productivity, and a long and tiring workweek. A foreman who demanded strict obedience, a boss who established longer working hours, or an engineer who quickened the pace of production might be labeled a fascist by some workers. Thus, the Popular Front became an opportunity to defy the work pace and to struggle against work itself.

In a letter to his deputy, one Parisian worker revealed his conception of the relation between work and fascism. The writer, who claimed to be a “convinced partisan of the Popular Front,” protested the dismissal of an employee, a young woman who had refused to labor during a legal holiday, 11 November.^[1] He accused the director of the company, the luxury store Fauchon, of being a “notorious fascist” (fascite [sic] notoire) and charged that the firing of the girl was illegal and intolerable “under a government of the Popular Front, elected by the workers for the defense of their interests.” Although the writer was wrong concerning the illegality of the dismissal (the prohibition on work during legal holidays applied not to luxury stores but to factories and mines), the letter—whatever its misspellings and insufficient knowledge of labor law—disclosed his identification of the Popular Front with the protection of holidays. It also significantly leveled charges of fascism against an employer who wished to recover a holiday. In Paris as in Barcelona, struggles over the treatment of holidays were widespread.

At Renault after the occupations, the guerrilla against work took a variety of forms, and workers took advantage of the new atmosphere of softened discipline: “In different workshops the workers have modified, on their own initiative, their working hours, entering an hour earlier or later and leaving accordingly.”^[2] In the chromium and nickel plating and polishing workshops, wage earners (mostly women) stopped production with a “disconcerting ability” and formulated their demands only after the work stoppage.^[3]

The newly elected union delegates often profited from the new climate in the factory. They consistently ignored a clause in the contract that instituted a ten-hour per month maximum for the exercise of union functions; many missed work whenever possible: “The delegates do not perform any real work. Some appear in their workshops only incidentally. Most of them leave their jobs at any moment without asking the permission of their foremen. The delegates meet almost constantly and, despite the numerous warnings issued, they persist in acting this way.”^[4] Delegates often left the factory to go to the union hall, in complete disregard of the contract; when management offered the delegates a card to permit them to circulate freely in the factory and thus to account for the time exercised in their functions, they refused.^[5]

Tensions between delegates and foremen were particularly acute at Renault and a dual power existed. Foremen who attempted to enforce work discipline often ran into the opposition of both delegates and workers who disobeyed their orders. When a delegate returned to his workshop and his foreman reproached him for his “unauthorized absence,” the delegate replied that “he had had enough, that it had to blow up, and that the next time workers would not hang foremen and bosses in effigy but for real.”^[6] Delegates were known to enter the factory “in a state of excessive drunkenness,” “engaging in clowning, preventing workers from working normally.” In February 1937 a delegate ordered that machines be turned off during his mealtime, and the result was “difficulties, if not impossibilities of working during meals.”^[7]

Both union representatives and workers attempted to control hiring and firing at Renault. In September 1936 the personnel of atelier 147 demanded the dismissal of their foreman “with the plea that he made them work too much.”^[8]Syndicats, the review of the anti-Communist faction of the CGT, complained when the Renault management refused to hire an inexperienced young worker for a highly specialized job: “The industrialists want to employ only workers capable of maximum output.”^[9] The journal called for CGT control of hiring. Delegates asked management to fire wage earners—regardless of their work record—who refused to join the CGT.^[10] Union representatives opposed the hiring of workers associated with right-wing parties and unions. Incidents of varying degrees of violence erupted:

10.9 [36], atelier 59: The workers of metal pattern-making wait at the exit for the worker K., who has received a medal for being one of the best workers in France. He was followed as far as his residence at Billancourt by three hundred agitators who covered him from head to feet with spit. At the place Sembat the police dispersed the mob.^[11]

Although union power could not always prevent layoffs and dismissals, management found it difficult to fire some workers who, in its judgment, had committed “grave professional errors.”^[12] A company driver who had caused three separate accidents on three consecutive days could not be dismissed:

We had to keep this worker, under the pretext that his firing was not caused by his professional errors, but because he was the chauffeur for (PCF) Deputy Costes during the strike.

Right now concerning the working-class personnel, each job change requires several hours of discussion with the interested parties. Each dismissal, even those that are completely justified, becomes subject to negotiations that can involve the management and even the ministry. Examples are both numerous and daily.^[13]

When companies in various industries laid off workers, strikes ensued.^[14] Toward the end of the Popular Front, employers still inquired about the correct procedures for dismissing CGT delegates whom they charged with responsibility for defects in production.^[15]

Union representatives usurped management prerogatives concerning employment: “Certain delegates take advantage of their position for personal reasons. Example: X, delegate, changed one of his cousins from an unskilled laborer to an o.s. (ouvrier spécialisé), ousting an o.s. and making him an unskilled worker.”^[16] In atelier 125, rationalization of a process for car interiors had reduced the need for workers, and the management wanted to dismiss female wage earners whose rate of absenteeism was high and to retain those women who were the sole breadwinners of their families. The delegate, however, opposed management’s selections and argued for the retention of three married women (whom management believed to be the favorites of the delegates). The company asserted that the women whom the delegates protected did not need the jobs as much as unmarried or divorced women with an equal or larger number of dependents.^[17]

Delegates used the gains of the May and June occupations in special ways. After the strikes in the spring of 1936, regular searches of the packages and suitcases of workers leaving the factories were suspended, and in atelier 243 a delegate threatened “incidents” if management reinstituted the checks.^[18] Nevertheless, during several months the management quietly employed “a discreet surveillance.” On 4 December 1937 a delegate and his partner were arrested as they entered a taxi. Both were carrying heavy bags and were taken to a police station where they declared that, every day for several months, they had stolen five kilograms of antifriction metals, which they later resold. Renault claimed 200,000 francs in damages, including the cost of the stolen goods and the estimated price of the “disorders affecting our manufactures.” A conservative newspaper reported that all except one of the “twenty or so inspectors and workers from Citroën who stole numerous parts during 1936 and 1937” had been found guilty.^[19]

Work slowdowns and protests against piecework were frequent during the Popular Front. In the late summer and early fall of 1936, wage earners fought hard against production incentives and a “too rapid” production pace.^[20] After June 1936 in the Renault aluminum foundry, new machinery, which was supposed to reduce costs 20 percent, was installed, but the new equipment succeeded in cutting costs by only 4 percent because after a “long discussion,” workers refused to “work with this new material.”^[21] Slowdowns continued in various workshops and assembly lines throughout 1937 and 1938. In July 1937 a director of personnel wrote that management had to confront “a great deal of both declared and underhanded ill will that paralyzes our efforts.…We now have serious problems maintaining piecework and production incentives. In a number of firms, in order to avoid debates, piecework has been retained only nominally, and there is really a fixed salary.”^[22] He believed that the only way to increase productivity was to restore incentives of piecework. Renault management charged that output in 1938 was lower than in 1936.^[23] In contrast to 1936, work did not “begin normally” at starting times. Workers in the polishing workshop stopped at 1130 instead of 1200 and at 1430 instead of 1600. In the gear section work began a half-hour late and ended a half-hour early. On the assembly line, output increased only in the delegates’ absence.

According to the employers, it was necessary to watch workers very closely to obtain decent productivity.^[24] In August 1937 management rationalized a Renault assembly line to produce 15 to 16 chassis per hour instead of the previous 8 to 10. An executive explained the operation.

No worker had to do more work than previously. The increase of production was made possible by the elimination of certain operations and the amelioration of machinery and method. With regard to [workers’] health, special fans and screens were installed, which meant a real advance in working conditions. From the beginning [of the reorganization] we ran into ill will and systematic opposition against the work pace.^[25]

The delegates charged that the work rhythm was “inhuman” and that workers could not produce more than 13 chassis per hour. Despite the resistance, management claimed to have kept its “patience” and continued to pay workers as if they had reached the production goal. In November 1937, the company became frustrated by the “arrogance” of the delegates and tried to demonstrate to the workers that it was possible to attain 15.5 chassis without difficulty. The 15.5 goal was met at the end of November only when the delegates were absent, and the executive believed that workers could exceed this target if they ceased “voluntarily” limiting their output.

In other incidents, delegates frequently encouraged workers’ resistance to production speed-ups. A widow who was a semiskilled lathe worker claimed that her Renault salary was her only source of income and conceded that she wanted “to make the most possible.”^[26] After the strikes of June 1936, (male) union delegates limited her piecework production and prohibited her from earning more than 5 francs per hour. The woman consulted with her foreman and supervisors who encouraged her to work energetically. She then went beyond the “ceiling” imposed by the delegates and earned 8.11 francs per hour. Consequently, “the delegates and the personnel of the workshop” became hostile to her. They accused her of being a member of Colonel de La Rocque’s Parti social français (or PSF, the successor to his right-wing Croix de feu) and charged that she had spied for management. She denied being a spy and indicated that she was apolitical. Her colleague, Mme B., threatened her life and on 13 January 1937 successfully aroused female co-workers against her. The widow declared that her fellow workers had angrily shouted “Death!” “Down with stool pigeons,” and “Up against the wall, La Rocque.” Several had inscribed “Death to fascists” in the sawdust in front of her machine. To avoid the hostile demonstration against her and possible injury, the widow was forced to leave the factory by a rarely used exit. In Renault’s polishing workshops a year later, union representatives continued to require that workers show them their paychecks so that the CGT activists could determine if the workers were producing beyond the de facto quota that had been established.^[27]

Although Renault’s difficulties are the best documented, it was not the only automaker to experience tensions between delegates and management. In September 1937 a twenty-five day strike erupted at SIMCA, FIAT’s Parisian branch. CGT representatives accused the management of the Italian firm of being “fascist” and “Mussolinian.”^[28] The union charged that management had refused to pay workers the minimum required by the collective bargaining agreement and treated shop stewards unfairly. Management replied that the conflict, which involved seventeen hundred workers at its Nanterre factory, was provoked by workers’ slowdowns. “Production graphs clearly demonstrate this ill will. During May and June [1937] production was systematically lowered and its rhythm fell from 64 to 40 or 42 cars per day. On 7 July the management warned that it would no longer tolerate the continuation of this situation and suddenly production returned to normal.”^[29]

Yet after July, incidents continued to plague the factory. Management dismissed a worker who had ruined a large press—valued at a half million francs. It also fired a delegate who, it claimed, had left the factory without authorization to go to the union hall. On Friday 27 August, several days after the firings, workers protested against a new system of pay distribution and stopped laboring in certain workshops at 4:00 P.M. Two hundred wage earners then demonstrated against management and, for several hours, prevented executives from leaving their offices. On the Monday following this protest, workers returned to their posts but, according to SIMCA, in an atmosphere of “underhanded agitation.” When the supervisor found defects in a number of automobiles, he stopped the assembly line. The delegate and several workers then restarted the halted line, even though management had assured them that they would have an opportunity to make up the lost time and pay. The company, claiming that it could not permit workers’ usurpation of its prerogatives, suspended twelve disobedient workers for forty-eight hours. When the supervisor announced the sanctions, he was booed, hit, and violently ejected from the factory. “The majority” of his fellow foremen “spontaneously” signed a letter of protest. In response to the August incidents, management fired forty-nine workers. Supported by the delegates and high union officials, the dismissed returned to the factory on 1 September. The following day, an occupation ensued and executives and foremen were again sequestered.

Fortunately for the historian, two arbitration reports evaluated management’s and union’s accounts. The first decided that workers must return to the factory on Monday 27 September under the same conditions that had existed before the occupation.^[30] Arbitrators eliminated the dining room used for union meetings and ended the position of the union secretary who did not labor in the factory. They also reduced the workweek to not fewer than thirty-two hours to provide for the employment of all personnel.

The second arbitration ruling was issued by Guinand, the president of the nationalized railroad company (Société nationale des chemins de fer, or SNCF), appointed arbitrator by the prime minister, Camille Chautemps of the Radical party, who had succeeded Blum in June 1937 and remained in office until March 1938.^[31] Guinand determined that management had been justified in dismissing the delegate who had left the factory in defiance of orders. He supported the firing of twenty-two workers and the suspensions, for one or two weeks, of twenty-two others. His panel criticized SIMCA for tolerating indiscipline and not penalizing workers immediately after they committed infractions. After listening to testimony from both labor and management, the board concluded:

We consider that a serious state of indiscipline, which destroyed productivity, certainly prevailed in the Nanterre factory. In particular, certain delegates went way beyond their duties as established in the collective bargaining agreement, and they interfered in technical matters against the wishes of supervisory personnel. This created deplorable incidents that hindered work efficiency. Specifically, an incident of this type occurred on 30 August during a demonstration in which a supervisor was forced to leave his workshop. This was absolutely wrong.

Even after arbitration, friction persisted between unionized workers and their foremen during the fall of 1937.

The decline of production and the unsettled state of the factories should not be entirely attributed to the actions of the delegates. Management tended to blame production problems on “troublemakers” and “agitators.” Yet these meneurs, as employers called them, found a solid base of support among fellow workers. Many SIMCA workers backed the actions of the shop stewards, and workers at Renault elected them by overwhelming majorities. At Renault in July 1936, the CGT Fédération des métaux received 86.5 percent of the votes of those registered, whereas the other unions combined polled only 7 percent, and abstentions were 6.5 percent.^[32] Generally by July 1936, cégétistes were pleased by the overwhelming majorities their candidates had received—despite employers’ resistance—in shop-steward elections throughout the Paris region.^[33] In July 1938 the CGT continued to hold its majorities; it polled 20,428 out of 27,913 votes, or 73 percent. The other unions—Syndicat professionnel français, CFTC (Catholic), and independents—obtained only 11 percent in total. Abstentions more than doubled, from 6.5 percent in 1936 to 16 percent in July 1938. Although CGT militants may have employed violence to intimidate voters, as management charged during the Popular Front, the delegates of the Fédération des métaux, which won such lopsided majorities (71 delegates out of 74 in 1938), must have expressed many of their constituencies’ desires.

On occasion these constituencies did limit the power of the delegates. In one case delegates required that management end a certain incentive in return for the delegates’ pledge that productivity would not suffer; nevertheless, output fell.^[34] As early as 30 June 1936 during negotiations between the labor minister and metallurgical employers, a CGT delegation promised to help increase output, but this commitment also remained unfulfilled. Intervention by the delegates to improve production risked arousing “the anger of the workers against the delegates.” CGT metallurgical officials were concerned that either “Trotskyists” or “fascist professional unions” would gain support among workers if the Confédération did not pursue workers’ demands aggressively enough.^[35]

As in Barcelona, appeals by high-ranking union and Communist party officials that workers work harder often went unanswered. On 16 September 1936 the Renault management reported a work stoppage “in spite of the intervention” of the secretary of the Fédération des métaux of Billancourt and of an important CGT leader, Timbault. Even lower-ranking delegates would sometimes disobey union superiors or renege on agreements: “With the consent of the delegates, it was agreed that the painters would work two hours overtime to finish the vehicles for the automobile show. At 6:00 P.M. the delegate M, dissatisfied with his pay, gave them an order to leave in the name of the CGT.”^[36] The Metallurgical Employers’ Association listed a number of incidents where CGT delegates hindered production by “haranguing” and exhorting their workers. Even after offending delegates were dismissed, production slowdowns sometimes continued among the rank and file. Indeed, industrialists claimed, some delegates even resigned, “exasperated by the unjustified demands of the workers.”^[37]

Local CGT newspapers would occasionally acknowledge that workers were late without justification. On 1 April 1937 L’Unité (CGT) noted lapses in discipline at the Renault ball-bearing workshop.

We have had only too often the opportunity to record a number of uncommon absences for reasons often frivolous and sometimes nonexistent.

Moreover, it is quite natural that everyone respects the work schedule, given by the management and accepted by us. We implore you to obey our union’s discipline since in no way should we lay ourselves open to our enemies.

The anti-Communist Parti populaire français agreed with its adversary. The PPF’s publication, Le Défenseur, approved the gains that the June strikes had produced at Renault: the end of turnstiles, a “little less arrogance from the wardens” (i.e., foremen), and the ability to enter the factory a bit late without losing a half day’s pay. Nevertheless, “in return, the comrades exaggerate. They arrive either at 7:30 or at 8:00, thus disturbing the starting of the assembly lines. In addition, certain [workers] stop work ten minutes before the whistle.”^[38]

Some Communist militants were irritated by the workers’ actions, and the local PCF newspaper, La Lutte finale, charged that “indisciplined comrades” were falling into a trap set by management by not producing well. During a cell meeting one militant “protested against the abuses perpetrated by the comrades: work stoppages before the whistle. The punching-in at noon had been ended, but the comrades were in the streets before the noon whistle had blown.…[He noted] work stoppages twenty or thirty minutes early.”^[39] The PCF disliked “personal decisions” and refused “to tolerate, under any pretext, individual action.” A militant who was seen speaking to his foreman while intoxicated and who admitted having “been a little drunk” was mildly reprimanded by his cell. Communist activists were warned not to commit violent acts against non-PCF workers since “it is better…to keep them in view, to fence them in, and in some way to make them prisoners in case of a movement.” Besides, the militant declared, out of 34,000 CGT members at Renault only 4,000 were in the PCF. Thus, 30,000 workers remained non-Communist, according to the PCF’s own figures.

Occasionally, but rarely, delegates and CGT officials would respond to management’s requests and ask workers to increase their output. For example, at Renault in September 1937, new and unskilled dippers (trempeurs) were hired and, according to management, worked poorly. In response, veteran dippers cut their production “brutally” and began to work like their newly employed colleagues. “At this moment the intervention of the delegates, who told these workers that sanctions would be taken against them if they did not resume their normal production, was very useful to support our [management’s] efforts.”^[40] Shortly thereafter, production returned to normal. In the spring workshop, both old and new workers engaged in slowdowns. When the delegates intervened to improve output, veteran workers then produced at a normal pace. Although intervention by delegates to augment production was sometimes successful, it had definite limits since it might jeopardize their popularity and effectiveness among their constituencies. Union representatives generally hindered production, disturbed normal factory discipline, and even intimidated the minority of workers who wanted to produce at a quicker pace. Earlier hopes that union representatives in the factories would be a stabilizing force were destroyed.

The indiscipline and insubordination of many workers and delegates provoked a sharp reaction from shop foremen, engineers, technicians, and superintendents, who objected vigorously to the decline of their authority. Those who belonged to the right-wing Syndicat professionnel declared, “Mass production can exist only when a rigorous discipline reigns. Now the agitated state that exists in our industry can result only in slipshod production and uncertain delivery.”^[41] The Syndicat professionnel sent a letter to Prime Minister Blum in the fall of 1936, that cited the “troubles reigning in all the metallurgical factories of Paris and its suburbs.” It blamed the decline of the management’s authority on “irresponsible agitators who are not qualified to substitute for the management.” Foremen and superintendents claimed that they had approved the new social legislation “from its inception,” but they demanded that the government end agitation in the factories.^[42] The agents de maîtrise (supervisory personnel) contrasted the poor discipline at Renault with the “countries of order,” Great Britain, the United States, and Germany.^[43] In March 1937 certain disgruntled members of the maîtrise went on strike in four factories of the Société industrielle des téléphones to demand “absolute guarantees of safety and discipline.”^[44]

In January 1939, after the collapse of the general strike of 30 November 1938, the Syndicat professionnel reminded a senior Renault administrator that “since June 1936” workers had defied the authority of foremen and supervisors and that the cadres had now restored the “output and productivity of numerous workshops.”^[45] A letter of 1 December 1938, probably by Louis Renault, stated: “Our maîtrise has suffered for two years the repercussions of politics. It has frequently been forced to accept a lack of respect for discipline and systematically restrained output.”^[46]

Generally in automotive and metallurgical production, it was this climate of indiscipline that most disturbed industrialists and their immediate subordinates:

Since the month of June, there are complaints of a lowering of workers’ output. Most often, this reduction is not the result of the ill will of the workers but rather of a slackening of discipline. The intervention by the state, the unions, the delegates, and the cells provokes disorder in the workplace and also uncertainty in the minds of the workers about who is in charge.^[47]

Strikes of several hours’ duration sabotage production less than the state of indiscipline that is being fostered in the factory and now infects the workers. Consequently, our first duty is to struggle against the institutionalization of indiscipline.^[48]

Reacting to the lax discipline, many foremen and superintendents, and perhaps engineers and technicians was well, inclined toward extreme right-wing parties or fascist movements that clamored for the restoration of order and discipline in the workplace. These movements attracted those cadres who, for personal or patriotic reasons, insisted on hard work and heightened discipline: “When there is no discipline, output must be faulty. The necessity of discipline is so evident that engineers and foremen, who want the factories to operate well and who are in daily contact with the work force, are the first to demand the preservation of management’s authority.”^[49] In response, workers who opposed a quickened production pace would sometimes charge—justly or not—that foremen who exacted increased productivity and workers who refused to participate in production slowdowns were fascists or members of right-wing organizations.^[50] Those workers who continued to labor during a strike were also labeled fascists by their striking colleagues.

Despite its nationalization, the aviation industry experienced somewhat less intensively the problems that characterized automobile production during the Popular Front governments. Nationalization of the war industries and elimination of privately owned defense firms had been a goal of the Popular Front, and at the beginning of 1937 the French state assumed control of most large aviation companies. CGT representation on the administrative councils of the nationalized enterprises was quickly instituted; although in a minority position, the union did participate effectively in the management of the nationalized aviation companies during 1937 and 1938. These enterprises retained their former owners and managers, men like M. Bloch and H. Potez, to direct the day-to-day operations of the firms.

Nationalization brought workers significant changes, raising salaries and guaranteeing better benefits and more job security. Increasingly in 1938, the government also set out to rationalize production in an industry that often conserved its artisanal character. Its goals were to specialize production, eliminate craftsman-like methods, and promote assembly-line organization. The state encouraged the formation of specialized factories that mass-produced aircraft parts; this “rational organization of work” produced excellent results that in 1938 cut the time necessary for certain operations.^[51] Engineers were employed to determine the ideal duration of specific tasks; one process, for instance, was reduced from twenty-five thousand hours of labor to four thousand.^[52]

Nationalization also led to a further standardization of manufacturing processes. New machines were purchased in France or abroad to offset shortages of qualified personnel. Buildings were constructed and more workers—many of them attracted by the offer of higher salaries—were hired. The state promoted the concentration of previously dispersed branches while encouraging the establishment of new factories outside the Paris region, which in 1936 contained 65 to 90 percent of French aviation plants and featured relatively generous wages and frequent agitation.

In nationalized aviation, workers received good wages for several reasons. Despite expanding rationalization, many operations in the industry required highly skilled workers, in contrast to the automobile sector where work was generally less precise and less complicated. Because the French demographic situation kept skilled laborers in short supply, to attract and keep them industrialists paid qualified workers well. Aviation managers were forced to hire many new workers who, according to a supporter of the Popular Front and its nationalizations, were often poorly qualified.^[53]

In addition to the industry’s need for qualified labor, CGT representation on its administrative councils and the industry’s vulnerability to strikes that could paralyze national defense all gave the union considerable influence on contract negotiations. Many workers in nationalized aviation were therefore relatively privileged, and private employers complained that they could not match the elevated wages and improved benefits that were attracting their best workers into this sector.^[54] Qualified workers increased not only their wages but also their mobility during the Popular Front; knowing that their skills were in demand, workers could easily move from one firm to another. High rates of turnover were hardly conducive to rigorous discipline or heightened productivity.^[55] Indeed, one prudent manager recommended that time-measurement controllers be more lenient with skilled workers, thereby encouraging them to stay. Employers were obliged to tolerate acts of indiscipline as well as disputes between qualified workers and experienced time-measurement controllers who refused to “bend…to the demands of the skilled.” In possession of greater bargaining leverage, skilled workers were sometimes (as in the spring of 1938) more willing to strike than their less skilled companions.

Perhaps because of employees’ greater pride in workmanship and improved working conditions, nationalized aviation firms experienced less agitation and social tension than either aviation firms that remained in private hands or the automobile industry. Although the tensions were somewhat mitigated, the nationalized sector still confronted labor difficulties. CGT delegates, who were supposed to facilitate labor-management relations, took advantage of their position to escape from the factory.^[56] An anonymous whistle-blower, whose charges were generally confirmed by state inspectors, wrote that the authority of union delegates at SNCASO at Suresnes (Société nationale de constructions aéronautiques du sud-ouest, formerly Blériot) often surpassed that of the foremen.^[57] Union representatives and even other union members had stopped working; according to this informant, forty to fifty workers out of fourteen hundred no longer produced. “Contrary to the orders of management,” the delegates slowed work rhythms and left the factory whenever they wished without receiving permission.

A military technician, who inspected a number of nationalized aviation companies in the Paris suburbs, assessed the situation at SNCASO in Courbevoie.

The authority of the maîtrise is now nearly nonexistent. The major part of the supervisory personnel and technicians, seeing that they were not supported by management, joined the CGT and cooperated (faire corps) with the workers to maintain the slowdown of production. However, some would like to demonstrate their authority.^[58]

At the Courbevoie plant, delegates had four rooms, desks, and a telephone at their disposal. On the walls, a list of all personnel was posted, and union representatives could summon a worker during working hours. Delegates left the factory when they desired and were able to paralyze production very quickly, as the 30 November 1938 strike would show. They had also organized a cooperative that could provision workers during factory occupations. At Sautter-Harlé—an armaments maker with approximately a thousand workers—the management agreed to permit six union delegates to use a room but soon concluded “that what the delegates wanted was a room at their disposal the entire day and beyond the control of management.”^[59]

Even when aviation delegates attempted to aid production, their advice often went unheeded. For instance, in September 1938, despite delegates’ promises that workers would labor Saturday and Sunday, many failed to appear for weekend duty.^[60] Discipline in the plants became lax and authority was frequently defied. At Gnôme et Rhône, an aviation firm in which the government had partial control (participation minoritaire), a worker complained of the reinforced work discipline that followed the Jacomet arbitration agreement of the spring of 1938.^[61] Before the arbitration over worktime and wages, workers could move freely in the factory and go to the toilet when they desired. After the Jacomet decision, however, thirty guards were posted, toilets and dressing rooms were closely watched, and the authority of the foremen was strengthened. The atmosphere had changed considerably since June 1936, according to Trotskyists; management became bold enough to fire workers, hire informers, and employ guards who were former boxers and street fighters. It increased the number of time clocks and imposed “insolent and definitive workshop rules” against “entering the dressing rooms before the whistle.” Workers could be dismissed for eating on the job or making unauthorized trips to the toilets. The foremen were returned to their previous role as “prison guards,” and, of course, the power of the delegates was restricted. The CGT protested in June that it had lost control over hiring, which was now in the hands of the company union, Association des ouvriers Gnôme et Rhône.^[62] CGT membership dropped 25 percent as workers abandoned the Confédération for the company union, which the Left linked to the right-wing Syndicat professionnel.^[63] Prior to the Jacomet arbitration, all ten men in one shift had been in the CGT, but in July only five remained and seven had joined the company union (two wage earners apparently belonged to both unions); a revolutionary syndicalist estimated that at least 10 percent of the union members at the factory belonged to both organizations. Thus, as in Barcelona, a worker’s membership in a union did not mean a commitment to its ideology. In addition, after the Jacomet decision the forty-five-hour week was established and divided into five weeks of six days’ labor followed by three weeks of five working days. Recovery, or the making up, of holidays was facilitated, and workers were assured of only one full weekend every eight weeks.

Indiscipline was not limited to blue-collar workers. Early in the Popular Front, R. Caudron, an aviation industrialist, criticized the “poor output” of white-collar workers in his research department and emphasized the need for reinforced discipline and order:

We must have a responsible person who can watch output, who forces [the personnel] to be on time, who restrains their overly indulgent exits and absences, who controls visits…in a word, who puts our house in order.

Our 170 employees have missed a total of 1,239 hours of work in November [1936], of which 458 hours were attributed to sickness.^[64]

Unproductive aviation workers, like lax autoworkers, could not easily be dismissed.

In aviation firms under greater governmental control, senior administrators condemned “la vague générale de paresse” and planned to use overtime and “especially to strengthen the authority of the factories’ management.”^[65] In the Paris region, it should be noted, the tension between workers and their immediate superiors was intensified by the narrowing of pay differentials between the two categories. Workers sometimes earned more money than the foreman who directed them. An engineering professor, who advocated “scientific” organization of work, inveighed against the “tendency to level wages, which therefore discouraged the best [workers].”^[66]

Aviation workers resisted piecework and incentives for production. At the beginning of 1938 the Minister of Aviation declared that aircraft production had been hindered, not primarily because of the forty-hour week, but rather because of the “insufficiency of hourly production in the nationalized factories.”^[67] Aviation industrialists, like state engineers, demanded that output be augmented. At Gnôme et Rhône, workers agreed among themselves to limit production: when management wanted to quicken output, “unforeseeable incidents and machine stoppages showed the impossibility of increasing the pace.”^[68] Gnôme et Rhône workers knew how many pieces per hour their neighbors had completed, and pro-Communist La Vie ouvrière declared that these workers refused “to accept an incentive to overproduce.”^[69] After the Jacomet decision of April 1938, Gnôme et Rhône personnel were no longer able to learn the amount that their colleagues earned from piecework, and pay was distributed in secret.^[70] By September, Gnôme et Rhône’s production rhythm was much greater but used fewer personnel than that of the Société nationale de constructions de moteurs (SNCM), whose nationalization in May 1937 was responsible for increased union power on the shop floor. At Salmson, a privately owned aviation firm employing twelve hundred workers, the CGT claimed that its secretary had been unjustly dismissed and that its delegates were prevented from exercising their functions.^[71] These actions by the management did not “encourage the workers to augment the pace of production,” and the CGT asserted that “to obtain a normal output, one must have a normal attitude toward the workers.” Even the president of the SNCM at Argenteuil, who was a strong advocate of nationalization, alerted his personnel that “in the factory, one works.”^[72] Although René Belin, the CGT leader who represented the union on the administrative council of the SNCM, denied that he had “imposed” a resolution concerning the length of the workday and output on workers, he nonetheless stated that “a satisfactory output” should be maintained “in the aviation factories and especially at the Lorraine [SNCM].”^[73]

While managers of the nationalized aviation firms granted workers increased wages, high overtime pay, August vacations, improved health and safety conditions, professional reeducation, special transportation to work, and even CGT participation in hiring, they nevertheless insisted on tying pay levels to production through a system of piecework or incentives. Officials in both public and private enterprises were convinced that incentives were necessary in a situation where, despite the purchase of new machinery and the addition of new personnel, productivity frequently declined. A detailed investigation of one factory in 1937 placed the decline at 5 percent, which appears to be slight.^[74] However, given that aviation was attracting some of the highest paid workers in a period of growing international tension, even a 5 percent drop was significant. Furthermore, the 5 percent figure did not take into account social conflicts or strikes. Although other reports claimed that individual output had not decreased, more detailed and voluminous documentation indicates that extremely serious problems of output and productivity existed in Parisian aviation plants during the Popular Front. Officials determined that productivity had dropped sharply between June and October 1936 and then stabilized at relatively low levels in 1937.^[75] At the still private Breguet plant at Vélizy “the work teams usually labored lethargically…slowdowns, negligence, and pilfering (freinage et coulage) became widespread.”^[76] At the Riom trial, Stéphane Thouvenot—a young engineer who obtained high positions in the nationalized sector both during the Popular Front and the liberation—stated that “nationalization took place in a troubled political and social atmosphere and failed industrially. The main cause of the failure was the relations between workers and bosses.” A recent study of the industry concurs.

On the whole, the nationalized enterprises produced 395 airplanes in 1937 in contrast to 483 in 1936 in the workshops that they inherited. During this period, their average yearly personnel rose from 14,220 to 14,894 workers and foremen, or 37.7 employees per plane as opposed to 29.44 in the preceding year, which meant a 28 percent reduction of output. Certainly, this was offset by retooling and reorganization.…Certainly, the planes were more complicated: For all that, the net reduction of output was 11 percent. More than their private competitors because of their role as “social showcases,” the nationalized firms experienced problems resulting from the balance of forces established after the strikes of 1936. According to a confidential report of February 1938, the production of Morane-Saulnier fighters at the Bourges plant was thus delayed because of the reluctance of the work teams to change from traditional Hanriot manufactures to the Morane-Saulnier, which had been subcontracted fifteen months earlier.^[77]

In 1938 the employers’ organization, Constructeurs de cellules, appealed to the Minister of Aviation for “the development of piecework.”^[78] The president of the Chambre syndicale de moteurs also recommended piecework. In November 1938 a handwritten memo on the departure of skilled workers from Renault established that one major reason for the skilled workers’ mobility was that work was less strenuous in airplane production and “in aviation, piecework is only a disguised hourly wage. Since competition is minimal, the taxpayer pays the bill.”^[79] Renault listed twenty-three skilled drillers (fraiseurs) whose piecework earnings were substantially less than management desired. Metallurgical employers charged that “piecework [in aviation] is practically abandoned. The Fédération des métaux (CGT) constrains workers not to go beyond a ‘ceiling’ of fixed salaries.”^[80]

An unnamed informant denounced piecework in aviation as “a mockery.” He cited the example of a task performed by several workers in four minutes. When one worker completed the same job in sixteen minutes, the others consequently reduced their pace.^[81] A report written by an engineering professor complained that “deplorable habits” had become rooted in aviation; workers were appealing over the heads of their own management directly to the Minister of Aviation.

Thanks to the atmosphere in the aviation ministry and thanks also to the demagogy of certain directors, consulting committees [composed of an equal number of labor and management representatives], which could have promoted collaboration in another era, helped to disorganize the firms. Certain workers went so far as to call for complete control of the administration [of the factory].^[82]

In a personal letter to the minister, B. Rouzé (the production manager of the SNCAN [Société nationale de constructions aéronautiques du nord] and a member of the Radical party) criticized union delegates who interfered when foremen disciplined workers.^[83]

A military technician, visiting nationalized factories in the Paris suburbs, reported deliberate slowdowns by workers. The SNCASO plant at Courbevoie was “a model of passive resistance to production.”^[84] One worker who was expected to produce one piece every hour made only six pieces in seven hours. When challenged, he demanded that the production manager finish the part in the allotted time. The manager then produced the piece in front of the worker in “21 minutes without hurrying.” The military technician concluded that the worker’s slowness more than tripled costs and that sanctions should be applied if he did not increase his output.

A young engineer made even graver charges concerning the Courbevoie plant, which was headed by Marcel Bloch. The engineer’s letter was forwarded to the Minister of Aviation by Lucien Lamoureux, a Radical party deputy, who had supported the Popular Front at its inception. Lamoureux became increasingly hostile to the coalition of the Left and was eventually one of its most resolute opponents in the Radical party. An investigation undertaken by an important official of the ministry, Thouvenot, verified the engineer’s charges.^[85] A prototype of the fighter plane M.B. 150, which had taken 18,000 hours to build at the beginning of 1936, required 40,000 hours in 1938. The unnamed technician believed that productivity had declined for several reasons. First, since May 1936 salaries were no longer linked to output. Thus, “the good and the bad worker had equal pay.” Second, “the unions became strong” and effectively threatened strikes if dissatisfied; the disciplinary authority of the supervisory personnel had therefore been decisively weakened. Other reports concerning nationalized aviation reiterated that “ill will” reigned in certain plants and recommended increasing the weight of piecework in the workers’ total salary.^[86] They remarked that the work rules of the collective bargaining agreement assigned workers to a specific atelier, thereby obstructing management’s flexibility.^[87] An admiral criticized a nationalized company for high costs, which were caused partially by a lack of planning and by what he termed “ouvriers peu travailleurs.”^[88]

Aviation workers vigorously defended the weekend and the forty-hour week. As a result, French aviation production was slowed and weakened in comparison with the German industry, where workers labored between fifty and sixty hours per week.^[89] In some German metallurgical factories, wage earners worked ten hours per day, and several mechanical construction firms were permitted to operate sixty to seventy-two hours per week. The point here is not to echo simplistic Vichyite accusations that the Popular Front was responsible for the French defeat in 1940 but rather to show the tenacity of resistance to work in a period of heightened international tension. The persistence of refusals suggests that in 1938 the nationalization of the masses was still incomplete in France. Given the history of the Second World War, it is regrettable that German workers did not imitate their French comrades.

In 1938 the French government and employers pressured the workers to work overtime to close the gap. However workers resisted these demands for several reasons of varying importance. The ideology of both the Communist and anti-Communist factions of the CGT clearly asserted that overtime was unnecessary and exploitative when unemployment existed. This discourse on unemployment regarded overtime as an attack on unemployed workers’ right to and need for a job. Nevertheless the CGT position, shared of course by the rest of the Popular Front, did not take into account the conditions in an advanced economy, where the lack of skilled workers and technicians created bottlenecks in production. The short supply of skilled workers was aggravated by the participation of the CGT in hiring: “In the nationalized aviation factories, delegates controlled employment. From a professional point of view this recruitment left something to be desired, and a CGT or PCF card was often required.”^[90] At a SNCASO factory in the Parisian suburbs, CGT delegates hired only union members who (it was charged) were often Communists. Although the regional hiring office (Office départemental de placement) protested CGT hiring practices, it proved incapable of reducing CGT control.^[91] Employers feared even lower productivity if the unions took complete control of hiring and firing.

Workers in aviation and other industries not only resisted overtime and attempts to lengthen the workweek through solidarity with the unemployed but, more important, because they wanted to protect their weekend and the forty-hour week. Despite claims by many in the Popular Front that workers would be willing to sacrifice for national defense, the authorities found it difficult to extend the workweek beyond forty hours. A governmental report affirmed that one reason planes were not being completed on schedule was that legislation had restricted overtime.^[92] It attributed insufficient exports, in part, to inflexibility concerning extra hours. In February 1938 high government officials claimed that only several thousand aviation workers were performing overtime, and more effort was needed if delays were to be reduced.^[93] On 2 March 1938 Syndicats reported that the “metallurgical workers are too attached to the forty-hour week to let it be violated.” Pressure grew in March as Henry Potez, other aviation industrialists, and military officers demanded more hours of labor without compensatory time off: in a schedule of five days of eight hours, they requested that a worker who worked nine hours one day would no longer be able to labor only seven hours the next.^[94] Again in June 1938, top aviation officials stressed “the extreme difficulty that they confronted in making overtime acceptable in private industry.”

An investigation claimed that workers’ refusal of overtime had “nearly paralyzed overall production.”^[95] The inquiry calculated that on average aviation workers performed only three hours of overtime per year and had the right to recover these hours. Wage earners’ insistence on this right made overtime “nothing more than a costly shift of the schedule.”^[96] In public, Popular Front organizations continued to insist that the union was willing to make the workers labor overtime for national defense. The workers, it stated, were willing to contribute to the antifascist cause, giving to the Spanish republic an extra hour without pay. In private, though, the CGT leader, Ambroise Croizat, admitted that the forty-hour week hindered aircraft production and that overtime was necessary, but he considered that “the working masses” were “insufficiently informed of industrial necessities.”^[97] Looking back during the Second World War, a clandestine issue of the Socialist newspaper, Le Populaire, reproached workers for failing to work overtime during the Popular Front.^[98]

In March 1937 and again in the spring of 1938, strikes erupted in various Parisian metallurgical firms, including aviation plants, over wage issues and the extension of the forty-hour week. During these strikes and others, aviation workers sometimes demonstrated an indifference to quality and even a hostility toward the means of production. In many workshops, work was halted without concern for the consequences that the stoppage would have on production rhythms.^[99] After the March–April 1938 strikes, the privately owned Société des avions Caudron reported 6,379 francs of damages. At the Société industrielle des téléphones, an electrical installation damaged during the occupation accidentally electrocuted one worker.^[100] Renault also claimed extensive “violence,” “damages,” and “thefts” during these occupations: windows were broken; raw materials wasted; and spark plugs, lamps, scissors, clothes, thermometers, and batteries were either missing or stolen.^[101]

Historians of various political persuasions have stated that during the strikes of the spring of 1938 the managements of both public and private aviation companies rejected the union’s offer to work forty-five hours per week.^[102] The aviation employers’ rejection of the forty-five-hour week was altogether exceptional, however, and stemmed from the high costs of the CGT demands. The Jacomet arbitration later reduced the costs of overtime pay, and the forty-five-hour week was accepted, though only in aviation.^[103] Thus, aviation directors—both public and private—supported changes in the forty-five-hour week. Their attitude was similar to that of the vast majority of the French bourgeoisie, who felt that the forty-hour week was legislated laziness that put France at a disadvantage in international competition or that the forty-hour week should at the very least be modified to suit the needs of each specific industry in order not to hinder production. Throughout the spring and summer of 1938 aviation managements pushed for longer working hours. In March 1938 the administrator of a nationalized enterprise, the SNCASE (Société nationale de constructions aéronautiques du sud-est), insisted on “the necessity, in order to accelerate production, to work forty-five hours…in the planning department and in tool fabrication.”^[104] Other aviation industrialists asserted that, to be effective, the forty-five-hour week had to be extended to suppliers of raw materials, semifinished products, and accessories.^[105] In July 1938 the Chambre syndicale des constructeurs de moteurs d’avions debated whether to accept only one hundred hours of overtime per year or to strive for “a permanent end” to the restrictions on the workweek:

Mr. X thinks that it is not more overtime but a permanent repeal that must be obtained.

I would share his opinion if this permanent repeal had some possibility of being enacted, which it does not. Therefore if we insist on it, which we will certainly not get, we risk losing the advantages of the extra credit of one hundred hours of overtime. Sometimes when you want to do something better, it turns out worse.^[106]

Again in the summer and fall of 1938, aviation workers fought against overtime and battled to save the weekend or at least two consecutive days without work. The forty-five-hour week in aviation was generally divided into five days of nine hours each, despite the desires of many employers—and Léon Blum—who would have preferred to divide the forty-five- and even the forty-hour week into six days.^[107] They argued that productivity and the likelihood of overtime were often greater in a six-day week. Important industrialists claimed that work during Saturday was preferable to working at night for several reasons. Productivity was lower at night, and it was harder to watch the shop floor since fewer supervisory personnel were available. In addition, public transportation was infrequent, and female workers were prohibited by law from work at night. Union activists nevertheless asserted that workers would “until the bitter end…resolutely defend” the workweek arranged in five days of eight hours each against that in six days of six hours and forty minutes each.^[108] In June 1938 the anti-Communist CGT members of the firm La Précision moderne were determined to defend “the 5 × 8, threatened by decrees.”^[109] The Fédération des métaux also opposed the extension of the workday. In October 1938 workers at both public and private aviation firms left their jobs at 5:00 P.M. instead of 6:00 P.M. to protest overtime: “The workers of a number of aviation companies—Farman, Caudron, Potez, Breguet—refused to do more than 8 hours of work. Completely disregarding ministerial decisions and in violation of the law, they left their workshops when their 8 hours were finished.”^[110]

Sanctions were taken against aviation workers at Hispano-Suiza and Caudron who had “as early as 15 October refused to do overtime allowed by the Jacomet [arbitration] decision.” Lasting less than a week, these sanctions were effective; 93 percent of the personnel was soon working forty-five hours per week. At Caudron the government authorized the dismissal of six hundred fifty workers who refused to do the legally authorized overtime. Shortly thereafter, most workers accepted the forty-five-hour week, significantly divided into five days of nine hours. Thus the weekend was conserved.

It should be mentioned that this agitation against extra work came after the Munich agreements of 30 September 1938, which the PCF actively opposed; the walk-outs and work stoppages in October may indicate some PCF influence among aviation workers. Employers asserted that the unions, in a large number of cases, prevented workers from performing overtime. Before the agreements were signed, union opposition had softened somewhat, but after Munich, the syndicats became intransigent. “We can cite examples of factories where workers now refuse to do the hours of overtime that they had accepted before 1 October. In aviation, this change of attitude is public.”^[111] The unions had agreed to work on 1 October, a Saturday, but then reneged and refused.

In light of the attempts by workers in aviation and other industries to defend the forty-hour week and the weekend—both before and after the Munich agreements—the Communist influence had only marginal importance. Workers, most of whom were not party-affiliated, fought to defend the gains of June 1936 regardless of party positions. Employers listed thirteen firms where workers refused, well before the Munich agreements, to perform overtime that had been approved by the Inspecteur du travail.^[112] Even when legally required to do so, aviation workers sometimes refused to work Saturdays and Sundays to recover holidays that had occurred during the working week. In May 1937, Gnôme et Rhône personnel nearly unanimously opposed work on Saturday and the recovery of holidays: in a referendum, 95 percent refused to work on Saturday and desired a normal weekend.^[113] In the week that followed Easter vacation, “certain workers refused Saturday labor, which was intended to recover the loss of worktime caused by the Monday closing.”^[114] The Gnôme et Rhône management dismissed twenty-four workers who allegedly did not work on Saturday.^[115] In May 1938 and again in August 1938, La Vie ouvrière reported workers’ resistance to the end of the forty-hour week.

On 1 September 1938, when international tensions were rising, the Société d’optique et de mécanique de haute précision—which made instruments used in national defense—received an authorization from the government permitting five hours of overtime and a workweek of forty-five hours.^[116] The management established that the workday would begin at 0730 instead of 0800 and finish at 1800 instead of 1730. On Monday 5 September, at the workshops on the boulevard Davout, 59 percent of the workers disobeyed the new work schedule by arriving late and 58 percent departed early. On Tuesday, 57 percent of the workers arrived late. At the Croix Nivert shops, 36 percent arrived late on Monday, and 59 percent on Tuesday. On Wednesday, 59 to 72 percent of the work force were absent for part of the day.^[117] Significantly, management noted that “the great majority” of skilled workers disregarded the new schedule and lacked discipline. Thus as in Barcelona, revolts against work were not limited to the lower strata of the working class during the Popular Front. Skilled workers’ disobedience “made it impossible to work normally during the overtime ordered by the prime minister.” Other companies reported numerous refusals by workers to obey the legal extension of the work week. Throughout 1938 a poor “social climate” prevented intensive aircraft production, and the inferior quality and quantity of labor caused a “bottleneck” in the aviation industry.^[118]

The threat of retaliatory strikes often prevented aviation management from firing disobedient or unnecessary laborers. CGT participation in hiring new personnel in the aviation industry made the problem of featherbedding nearly insoluble. By the beginning of 1938 many aviation firms had “a personnel larger than their needs, whereas for social reasons they were not able to lay off any worker. Output has been affected and production has fallen to half of what it could be considering the true capacity of the factories.”^[119] In February 1938 the chief administrator (administrateur-délégué) of Gnôme et Rhône stated that the aviation industry could double production without hiring additional workers. Usine, the employers’ periodical, remarked that aviation workers “produce much less than previously but earn twice as much.”^[120] The readiness of wage earners in aviation and other industries to defend their jobs and sources of income should not, of course, be confused with their eagerness to work in factories, as the continuing problems of output and discipline have demonstrated.

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.

Notes