LIP (company)
LIP is a French watch and clock company whose turmoil became emblematic of the conflicts between workers and capital in France.
[1] Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT) union leader Charles Piaget led the strike.
The Unified Socialist Party (PSU), which included former Radical Pierre Mendès-France, was then in favor of autogestion (workers' self-management).
Semi-skilled workers on the assembly line were not allowed to talk or move more than 25 centimeters (less than ten inches) during their shifts.
The UGS later merged with other organizations to form the Unified Socialist Party (PSU), which included Pierre Mendès-France, a popular left-wing figure who had been President of the Council during the Fourth Republic.
Although Fred Lip had believed this would allow him more control of the workers, in less than a year all the young representatives joined the CFTC.
LIP built the first French quartz watches in 1973 but had to face increasing competition from the United States and Japan.
The firm was forced to start liquidation formalities on 17 April 1973, leading Jacques Saint-Esprit to resign on the same day.
In the following weeks, the struggles at the LIP factory drew a national audience, thus beginning one of the emblematic social conflicts of the era after May 1968.
During an extraordinary works council meeting on 12 June 1973, workers stumbled upon the management's plans to restructure and downsize, which had been kept secret from them (one note said "450 à dégager", "get rid of 450").
[5] At first, Charles Piaget, now an official of the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail union and active in the Unified Socialist Party (PSU[2]), opposed a strike, preferring a slowdown, in which workers would pause for ten minutes an hour.
They included Charles Piaget, Roland Vittot, Raymond Burgy, worker-priest Jean Raguenes, and an executive of the company, Michel Jeanningros.
The CGT-CFDT union alliance (intersyndicale) now asked the Cahiers de Mai magazine to assist them in making a newspaper dedicated to the strike.
[2] Pierre Messmer's Minister of Industrial Development, Jean Charbonnel, a historic figure of left-wing Gaullism, named Henri Giraud as mediator of the conflict.
After this violent occupation, many firms of Besançon and of the region decided to go on strike, and workers rushed to the LIP factory to fight the military forces.
Union leaders tried to intercede to prevent any confrontation, but the government proceeded to order arrests, which led to court convictions in the following days.
An old farmer then went to see Michel Rocard and told him that he had heard, during a family meeting, a member of the special police forces boast that he had thrown Molotov cocktails and burned more cars than the May '68 demonstrators.
Finally, Claude Neuschwander, then number 2 at the Publicis advertising group and member of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU), agreed to become the factory's manager.
LIP became a subsidiary of BSN, and Neuschwander managed to have Antoine Riboud bypass the regular control of weekly accounts.
However, in May 1974, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, representing free enterprise, had been elected President of France, with the support of Jacques Chirac.
[5] The previous Minister of Industrial Development, Jean Charbonnel, testified that Giscard had declared: "LIP must be punished.
[5] In contradiction to the Dôle agreement of January 1974, the commercial court (tribunal de commerce) requested that LIP honor a debt of 6 million Francs owed by the former firm to providers.
Shareholders forced Claude Neuschwander to resign on 8 February 1976 and the Compagnie européenne d'horlogerie started liquidation proceedings in April.
Libération newspaper, founded three years before by Jean-Paul Sartre, printed the headline, "Lip, c'est reparti!"
Charles Piaget testified in 1977, in the Quotidien de Paris, about the self-management experiment: A few more than 500 workers are effectively in battle, gathering every day, and this, nineteen months after having been fired.
According to Charles Piaget, the difficulties of the second conflict, compared to the large victory obtained in 1974, could be explained by the May 1974 election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, whose government decided not to help companies in a difficult situation, and by the 1973 oil crisis.
The LIP reissued Charles de Gaulle's watch, which Jean-Claude Sensemat offered to U.S. President Bill Clinton.
In 2002, Sensemat signed a LIP world license contract with Jean-Luc Bernerd, who created La Manufacture Générale Horlogère in Lectoure Gers for the occasion.
(Agir ensemble contre le chômage), a union of unemployed people,[2] while the Dominican Jean Raguenès lives in Brazil, where he supports the Landless Workers' Movement (MST).
