bboc/06_Union_Busting.tex

\chapter{Union Busting}

\chapterauthor{André DEVRIENDT}

\repigraph{Prison and forced labour are the only possible solution to the social question. It is to be hoped that the use will become general.}{\emph{Chicago Times} (May 1886).}

As soon as the freedom to form trade unions was legalized in 1884, the repression against their activities began! Often brutal, sometimes insidious.

Certainly, the repression against the workers has always been when they revolted against the conditions that were made to them by those who lived from their work.
The companions of old supported epic struggles, suffered the repression of royal, imperial or republican \enquote{forces of order}, often with the blessing of the Church.
Let us mention only the great strike of the companion printers in Lyon in 1539. But there have been many others over the centuries!

Later, members of the International Workers' Association (the First International) were also persecuted.
Then, the workers, deprived of the right to assemble, to form defense organizations, used only authorized associations:
mutual benefit societies, transformed into resistance societies, illegal, of course.
It was under the cover of mutual societies that major strikes and riots were prepared and conducted in 1830 in Nantes, in 1831 in Paris and Limoges, as well as the revolts of the canuts, fiercely repressed, in Lyon in 1831 and 1834.

\section{The beginnings of trade unionism}

\repigraph{… My opponent was, remains and will remain the opponent of my class, the one who starves it and then,

when it screams, shoots it…}{Panaït Istrati, \emph{Vers l'autre flamme} (Towards the Other Flame)}

It was therefore in 1884 that the young French republic, third of the name, allowed the creation of trade unions.
Quite quickly, connections are made between the organizations that are formed. The Federation of Trade Unions and the Federation of Labour Exchanges were born.
They met in 1895, thus giving birth to the Conféfération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labour, C.G.T.).
The workers' movement is organizing, developing; it is preparing to wage great struggles, not only for demands but also for the abolition of wage labour in order to build a society in which the exploitation of man by man is abolished and in which social justice reigns.

Capitalism, too, is organizing; the employers will respond — with the help of the governments — with very harsh blows to the workers' claims to refuse their lives of misery.
The trade unionists, the workers will pay a high price, sometimes with their freedom and their lives, for their commitment to the struggles against the exploitation of which they are the victims.

In 1885, the famous Comité des forges (forges comitee) was transformed into a professional (employers') union; the Coal Committee was set up in 1886,
then the employers' chambers of metallurgy became the Union of Metallurgical and Mining Industries, Mechanical, Electrical and Metallic Engineering and Related Industries.
Fearsome war machine against the workers still scattered in several trade union organizations.
Unfortunately, it has been found that employers are much more quickly linked up against workers than they do against their bosses.

The CGT would therefore continue the fight of the exploited against their exploiters.
Trade unionists will experience victories over the years, many defeats too, due not only to their \enquote{natural} enemies, employers and government, but sometimes also, unfortunately, to their own divisions.
The war of 1914-1918, the  \enquote{Great War}, capitalist butchery, could not be prevented despite the commitments of the trade unions and the European socialist parties.
The planned general strike could not be called; the slogan: \enquote{The proletarian has no homeland} gave way to the Sacred Union…

\section{On strikes}

In 1900, strike in Saint-Étienne in January, in Martinique in February (9 workers are killed, 14 are wounded).
In June, 3 workers were killed in Chalon-sur-Saône. We could write if we were not afraid to trivialize these events: etc.!

The rising cost of living and rents force workers to live in slums; the very low wages, the methods of intensifying work in the factories, all this causes strong movements.
Strikes between 1902 and 1913. Metallurgists, miners, dockers, construction workers, textile workers, agricultural workers, taxi drivers…

The repression is extremely violent. Clemenceau and Briand (former vigorous defenders of the working class who became ministers) are at the head of the anti-working class reaction.
In Draveil, on June 2, 1908, the gendarmes shot at the demonstrators: 2 killed, 9 wounded. On July 30, in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, the army killed 7 workers and wounded 200 others.
The union leaders are arrested. Everywhere the army is sent against the strikers, a quantity of whom are arrested, dismissed by their bosses, defamed.
Thus the secretary of the coal miners of Le Havre, Jules Durand, is sentenced to death for moral participation in a strike!
His sentence was commuted to seven years' imprisonment and after an intense campaign in the country, he was released before his trial was reviewed.
But the trials had been too strong for Durand, who lost his mind. He was exonerated in 1918!

In fact Durand had been accused of a crime following a machination by big business and politicians.
Thus, the sad Briand did not hesitate to declare: \enquote{If, to maintain security, I had not had the necessary weapons, if it had been necessary to resort to illegality, I would not have hesitated.}
He didn't hesitate… There were many politicians, policemen, employers, who also did not hesitate to plot plots against trade union activists who were too active in all countries, under all regimes.
The government denied the railway workers the right to unionize, so they in turn entered the battle.

Their strike committee and 15,000 railway workers received a general mobilization order, which made Jean Jaurès say:
\enquote{They turned the cessation of work into a military offence.}

Previously, the postal workers had, in 1909, crossed their arms. Bullying, sanctions, dismissals rain down on the strikers. Another renegade of socialism, Labour Minister Viviani, proposed to the government the dissolution of the CGT.
This did not happen, but the Paris Labour Exchange was closed.

The CGT leads the struggles, supports the strikers. It will engage with almost all the unions that compose it in the demand for the eight hours:
eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours of leisure. The claim, launched in 1906, did not succeed until 1919.
At the same time, the Confederation carried out intense antimilitarist propaganda, advocating the idea of launching a general strike in the event of war.

\section{The May Firsts}

\repigraph{May 1st is an act that must not degenerate

to the point of becoming a parody of bourgeois festivities

or a sunny November 11.}{Georges Dumoulin (may 1937)}

It was from 1905 that the CGT organized strikes and parades on May 1st. The motive is to get the eight-hour workday.
The watchword is: \enquote{From May 1, 1906, the workers will only work eight hours!}

On May 1, 1905, Paris was put under siege. 60,000 troops crisscross the city; there were many fights and 800 arrests, hundreds of wounded in hospitals, and two deaths. The bourgeoisie experienced panic fear.
In the provinces too, work stoppages, demonstrations, incidents have taken place, particularly in Nice, Grenoble, Montpellier, Saint-Étienne, Lyon, Rochefort…

The idea of making May 1 a day of demands came from the United States. In Chicago, a huge strike took place on May 1, 1886, and continued on May 3 and 4. These days ended in tragedy.
The police fired on the crowd, killing five and wounding several others, and then a bomb exploded among the policemen, probably thrown by provocateurs. Anarchist workers were arrested, convicted without evidence and executed.

These eight hours were seen as \enquote{a down payment by the bourgeoisie on the immense debt it owed to the working class}, as Clara Zetkin wrote. This explains the impact of this claim.

Some May 1st were impressive, either by the number of strikers and demonstrators, or by the violence exercised by the so-called police forces, or by what they symbolized.
Thus May 1, 1919, after the war, was grandiose and marked by violent incidents, in France, in the United States, in Argentina… The one in 1920 was the largest in terms of the number of participants in France.
In 1934, it was the surge against fascism, in 1936, that of trade union reunification, a prelude to the great strikes of June.

In Spain, there was a formidable demonstration of popular forces.
But they were not going to suffer ordinary repression, so to speak, but a civil war unleashed against the Frente Popular by all that Spain had of power-hungry military, fascists, Catholic fundamentalists and, of course, big landowners, masters of the economy. 
Trade union confederations: the General Union of Labour, socializing, and the National Confederation of Labour, anarcho-syndicalist, were at the forefront of the fight, especially the C.N.T. which, in addition to the fight against fascism,
 laid the foundations, wherever it could, of a new society.

Abandoned by the democracies, Great Britain and France, the Spanish Republic succumbed to the blows of the Francoists supported by Fascist Italy and Hitler's Germany, with the blessing of the Pope.
The French government, on the other hand, welcomed as criminals, even enemies, the republican fighters who were able to take refuge with us in 1939.

Becoming Labor Day, May 1, a few bursts aside, gradually lost its symbol of class struggle.
In countries of dictatorship, it had already been diverted into military parades; elsewhere, it has become the lily-of-the-valley festival.
It will certainly take time for it to become a day of international demand again.

\section{Repression carries on…}

1936 was the year of the great workers' victory. The sacrosanct right of property was flouted — even if temporarily — by
the occupation of factories, the right to paid rest has been recognized, as well as the right to union representation.
No other victory has achieved such fundamental gains as these.

However, as early as 1937, the repression began. It is often the employers, by their actions, who provoke strikes.
Yellow  \enquote{trade union} organizations are created, such as the French Professional Unions.
In March, in Clichy, the police shot at workers; Toll: 5 dead, hundreds wounded.
In 1938, the CGT called for a strike against the decree-laws for November 30 because the decree-laws suspended a large part of the gains of 1936.
The strike is ill-prepared. Employers and government are leading the response together; activists are arrested, lockouts decided.
The police occupy \enquote{nerve centres}, railway workers and public service agents are requisitioned.
In this atmosphere of civil war, the strike is a failure (except in Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, Toulouse, Clermont-Ferrand).
The repression is widespread: 500 activists are sentenced to prison terms, 350,000 civil servants are subjected to disciplinary sanctions. The Popular Front has lived…

\section{Harsh repression and insidious repression}

To break a strike, a workers' struggle, repression can be bloody; to weaken a powerful trade union organization, it can be insidious, effective in the medium term; splitting is one of the ways.
It should also be noted that splits are not necessarily caused by forces hostile to trade unionism, they are sometimes, too often, caused by the unions themselves.

On November 9, 1940, the CGT was dissolved by the Vichy government, trade unions were banned.
Defectors from the CGT, the Belin, Dumoulin, Million, Froideval, etc., rallied to the Popular Rally and the Petainist Labour Charter which planned to create corporate professional organizations, as in fascist Italy, which would bring together bosses and employees. 
It is the collaboration of organized classes; strike action is prohibited.

The CGT is reconstituted in the Resistance. Its militants suffered the fate of the other resistance fighters when they were arrested either by the occupier or by the police or the Vichy militia.
A member of the National Council of the Resistance, the CGT established its program for the post-war period.

In the meantime, strikes are breaking out, demonstrations are happening despite the risks. Demonstrations on May 1, 1943 and 1944. Strikes in factories and at miners in Grenoble, Lyon, Marseille, in the mines of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, at railway workers…
After the Liberation, the CGT contributed to the reconstruction of the country, it restored the social laws of 1936, a struggle for the buying power of the workers. The employers, because of their \enquote{collaborationist} behavior with the occupier, cannot react effectively.
But in 1947, he reopened hostilities. Runaway inflation is lowering the standard of living of employees, already much lower than it was in 1938. Powerful strikes broke out: Renault, railways, press. The police intervene frequently, in short, the usual cycle.
For many, C.G.T. is too powerful. It must be weakened. The beginning of the Cold War helping, a heterogeneous conspiracy will cause a split supported by the American Federation of Labor, the American trade union federation.
The ground is ready, Force Ouvrière (Worker's strenght F.O) is born.

Four trade union federations exist: the C.G.T., F.O., the C.F.T.C.(french acronym for French confederation of Christian workers), the Fédération de l’éducation national (Feferation of National Education) (F.E.N.). 
A little later, the General Confederation of Independent Trade Unions was added.

Meanwhile, the employers strengthened themselves by creating the National Council of French Employers (C.N.P.F.).

1948 was a year of powerful strike movements and, consequently, serious repressions. Strikes are long, hard.
In the mines of the North, a socialist minister, Jules Moch, sent companies of mobile gendarmes, tanks, and put the region under siege.
As a result, 4 miners were killed, 2,000 were imprisoned, hundreds were injured.

That year, there were 6,561,176 strikers and 13,133,313 strike days!

While France is to be rebuilt, the governments of the Fourth Republic, which succeed each other at an accelerated pace,
do not hesitate to engage in a colonialist, ruinous and bloody war in Vietnam, and to exercise violent repression in Madagascar and Algeria.
In 1953, military spending represented 40\% of France's budget! The impoverishment of the working class is well underway, corporate profits are at record highs.

The unions are leading the struggle on all fronts, against the war in Vietnam, for the improvement of the purchasing power of employees.
Repression strikes at arm's length, it is the case to say it! Workers killed by the police or the thugs of the R.P.F. (Rally of the French People, Gaullist), arbitrary dismissals.
At the XXVIII Congress of the CGT in 1951, it was noted that 3,500 workers had been prosecuted before the courts.
that 1,200 have been sentenced to prison terms, that thousands of grassroots activists, staff delegates have been dismissed…

In June-July 1953, the Laniel government claimed to take measures aimed at the rights of employees: social security, increase in rents, raising the retirement age for civil servants, etc.
At the beginning of August a formidable strike movement was launched in which, at the call of the CGT, many members of Force Ouvrière and the C.F.T.C., and non-union members participated.
The P.T.T.(french acronym for mails, phones and telegraphs), the railways, the public services, the production of gas and electricity, the Parisian transport are paralyzed.
Banks, dockers, naval officers, construction and metallurgy guys are also getting into it. 4 million strikers; requisition orders remain without effect.

Brutal repression could not be appropriate in the face of the magnitude of such a movement.
It was by methods of division that this movement was weakened by using the leaders of the F.O. and the C.F.T.C. who called for the resumption of work, following secret negotiations with the government.

The Algerian war sounded the death knell for the Fourth Republic. We were very close to the civil war. The CGT fought against the war.
The coal and iron miners had the luxury of tell de Gaulle off, who had requisitioned them. General or not, they were not willing to obey with a curtsy and a bow. !

Then came May 1968. \enquote{Ten years is enough!} But ten million strikers did not achieve mirobolous results on the social level…

\section{We continue, despite everything!}

\repigraph{What is the producer? Nothing.

What should he be? Everything.

What is the capitalist? Everything.

What should he be? Nothing.}{Pierre-Joseph Proudhon}

Trade union action and its repression were the two constant aspects of the workers' struggle against their exploitation.
We saw it in this summary of their struggles. And again, here, we have mainly talked only about our country. Elsewhere it was, often, alas, even worse.

Yet, if we compare the living conditions of workers until recently, in France, to what were those of their ancestors in the last century, we see that their actions have not been in vain.

In this incomplete summary of workers' struggles and their repression, we have cited only dates and events as examples.
We can remember that the repression of governments and employers was always extremely harsh, even ferocious, against the people:
June 1830, 1848, the Commune, to speak only of the most well-known crimes.
However, it is by tens of thousands that the actions against social injustice are counted, it is every day that workers, employees, employees fight, and it is every day that they are repressed in companies, in offices. Dark work, stubborn, without glory, but how necessary and courageous!

Liberal capitalism, ultraliberal totalitarian, relying on the rapid progress of the technical means of production, on the extraordinary computerization of communication, has been able to create unemployment of such a magnitude that it can afford to dismantle without great difficulty large parts of the social conquests acquired with great difficulty by the workers.
The globalization of the economy is presented by capitalism and its zealous servants as the ultimate phase of history, thus as the unqualified superiority of this system over all other possible systems.

This idea has penetrated into many minds even that of some of those whose profession of faith is the defense of the working class.
The trade union movement is in tatters, all confederations are being taxed by splits, the number of organisations is constantly increasing, although the number of union members is constantly decreasing!
Trade unionism has taken severe blows, it has also fallen, misguided, but it is not dead.
To rebuild a powerful force, one must have in mind what Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said in Philosophie de la misère (Philosophy of misery):
\enquote{Whoever, in order to organize labor, appeals to power and capital, has lied, for the organization of labor must be the decay of capital and power.}

\rauthor{André Devriendt}

André Devriendt is editor of the \emph{Monde Libertaire}.
He has held many trade union positions (secretary of the C.G.T. proofreaders' union, member of the national council and the board of the Federal Union of Book and Paper Industry Pensioners C.G.T., General Secretary and Vice-President of the National Press and Book Mutual, etc.).

\section{Brief bibliography}

~~~\, Jean Bruhat et Marc Piolot, \emph{Esquisse d’une histoire de la C.G.T.} (Sketch of a history of the CGT), Éditions de la C.G.T., 1966.

Maurice Dommanget, \emph{Histoire du Premier Mai} (History of the First of May), \emph{Éditions Archives et documents}, 1972.

Fernand Rude, \emph{Les Révoltes des canuts, 1831-1834} (The canuts revolts, 1831-1834), Petite Collection Maspero.

\emph{Institut C.G.T. d’histoire sociale} (C.G.T. Institute of Social History), C.G.T. Approches historiques.

Émile Pouget, \emph{La Confédération générale du travail et Le Parti du travail} (The General Confederation of Labour and the Labour Party), Éditions C.N.T., 33, rue des Vignoles, Paris XXe, 1997.

Georges Lefranc, \emph{Juin 36, l’Explosion populaire} (June 36, the grassroot explosion), Éditions Julliard, 1966.

Gérard Adam, \emph{Histoire des grèves} (History of strikes), Éditions Bordas, collection \enquote{Voir l’histoire} , 1981.

Jean-Pierre Rioux, \emph{Révolutionnaires du Front populaire} (Revolutionnaries of the Popular Front), collection 10/18, 1973.

Thierry Laurent, \emph{La Mutualité française et le monde du travail} (The French Mutuality and the world of work), Éditions Coopérative d’information et d’édition mutualiste, 1973.

\emph{Luttes ouvrières} (Worker struggles), Éditions Floréal, 1977.

Jean Maitron (sous la dir. de), \emph{Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français} (Biographical Dictionary of the French Workers' Movement), Éditions ouvrières.

Marcel Caille, \emph{Les Truands du patronat} (The Mobsters of the bosses), Éditions Sociales, 1977.