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.