LIP (company)

LIP brand

Lip is a French clockwork brand. Following May 68, the Lip factory, which was based in Besançon, was self-managed starting in 1973, following the management's decision to liquidate it.

France was then presided by Georges Pompidou, who had named the Gaullist Pierre Messmer as Prime minister. But 1973 also marked the transition from a paternalist capitalism, with Fred Lip as one of its last representants, to the modern finance capitalism . During the 1974 presidential election, the Gaullist candidate, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, was abandonned by his rivals, in particular by Jacques Chirac who supported the right-wing liberal Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The latter won the elections, leading to a recomposition of the French right-wings.

CFDT trade-unionist Charles Piaget led the strike allowing workers to claim back the means of production. The Unified Socialist Party (PSU), which included former Radical Pierre Mendès-France, was then in favour of autogestion or self-management.

History

The Jewish community of Besançon offered in 1807 a mechanical watch (montre à gousset) to Napoleon. Sixty years later, Emmanuel Lipman and his sons founded a clockwork workshop under the name of Comptoir Lipmann, which became in 1893 the Société Anonyme d'Horlogerie Lipmann Frères (S.A. Clockwork Lipmann Brothers).

The firm launched the stopwatch Lip in 1896, thereafter making of Lip the brand of the company. They built around 2,500 pieces a year. The company launched the first electronic watch in 1952, named "Electronic" (it was not electric because of the presence of a diode).

However in the 1960s, this highly skilled company began to have some financial troubles. Fred Lipmann opened up the capital in 1967, leading Ebauches S.A., a subsidiary of ASUAG, a large Swiss consortium which later became Swatch, to take 33% of it. Ebauches became the first shareholder in 1970, owning 43% of the capital. The next year, the board of directors forced Fred Lip to resign, and replaced him by Jacques Saint-Esprit.

LIP built the first French quartz watches in 1973, but had to face increasing competency from the United States and Japan. The firm was forced to start liquidation formalities on April 17, 1973, leading Jacques Saint-Esprit to resign on the same day.

In the following weeks, strikes at the Lip factory enjoyed a national audience, thus beginning one of the emblematic social conflict of post-May 68, which would last several years.

1973 : Self-management

During May 1973, an Action Committee (CA, Comité d'action), influenced by the movement of May 68, constituted itself. During an extraordinary work's council on June 12, workers stumbled upon the administrators' plan of restructuring and of downsizing, which were hidden from them. This provoked the immediate occupation of the factory. During the night, the stock of watches was dissimulated by the workers to block any restructuring plan. The strike was notably lead by Charles Piaget, a responsible of the CFDT trade-union. The CFDT benefitted of the majority in the factory. Most of its leader were issued from the Action Catholique Ouvrière (AOC, Workers' Catholic Action) and of popular education movements. They included the workers Charles Piaget, Roland Vittot, Raymond Burgy, the priest and worker Jean Raguenes, and a firm responsible, Michel Jeanningros. Two female workers, Jeannine Pierre-Emile and Fatima Demougeot, were also CFDT leaders in the firm. Noëlle Dartevelle and Claude Mercet were the CGT delegates .

A large demonstration gathering 12,000 persons in the average-size town of Besançon took place on June 15, 1973. Three day later, a general assembly decided to continue production of watches, under the workers' control, to insure "survival wages." The LIP struggle was thenafter popularized with the slogan: C'est possible: on fabrique, on vend, on se paie! (It is possible: we manufacture them, we sell them, we pay ourselves!).

The CGT-CFDT trade-union alliance (intersyndicale) asked the Cahiers de Mai review to assist them in making a newspaper dedicated to the strike. Named Lip-Unité (Lip-Unity), this newspaper would help popularize the movement.

Pierre Messmer's Minister of Industrial Development, Jean Charbonnel, named Henri Giraud as mediator of the conflict. Negotiations between the trade-unions, the Action Committee and the mediator Giraud started on 11 August 1973. Four days later, the guarde mobile (a military unit) occupied the factory and expelled the workers. The military remained there until February 1974.

Following this violent occupation, many firms of Besançon and of the region decided to go on strike, and workers came to the LIP factory to struggle against the military forces. Trade-unionists tried to intercede in order to prevent any confrontation, but this didn't stop the government from ordering arrestations, which led to court convictions in the following days.

A national demonstration, taking place in Besançon, was decided on September 29, 1973. 100,000 persons demonstrated under beating rain, leading to the name of the marche des 100,000 (100,000 March). Meanwhile, tensions increased between the CFDT and the CGT trade-unions.

Prime minister Pierre Messmer wishfully declared on 15 October 1973: "Lip, c'est fini!" (Lip, it's over!). Behind the scenes, some "modernist" managers of the CNPF employers' union (Antoine Riboud, Renaud Gillet and José Bidegain) tried to find a solution to the conflict. Finally, Claude Neuschwander, then number 2 of the Publicis group and member of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) accepted to become the factory's manager.

The LIP delegation signed the Dôle agreement on 29 January 1974 with the direction. The Compagnie européenne d'horlogerie (European Clockwork Cie.), directed by Claude Neuschwander, took control of LIP. Neuschwander had 850 former workers engaged again, leading to the end of the strike.

1976 : the second movement

During the two following years, the new head of the firm had to confront unforeseen difficulties: some providers did not honour their engagements; Renault, a state enterprise, withdrew its commands; in contradiction with the Dôle agreement of January 1974, the trade court (tribunal de commerce) requested of LIP to honour a 6 millions Francs debt due by the former firm to providers. Furthermore, following the 1974 presidential election, the right-wing liberal Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had replaced the Gaullist Georges Pompidou. Giscard named Jacques Chirac Prime minister in May 1974, and Jean Charbonnel, Messmer's Minister of Industrial Development, was not included in the new government.

The manager Claude Neuscwander resigned on 8 February 1976, and the Compagnie européenne d'horlogerie started the liquidation process in April. The social movement hereafter started again. On May 5, 1976, the LIP workers occupied again the factory, launching anew the production of watches. Libération newspaper, founded three years before by Jean-Paul Sartre, titled "Lip, c'est reparti!" (approximatively: "Lip, again!"). Since no firm agreed on taking over LIP, the firm was definitively liquidated on 12 September 1977. Following long internal debates, the workers created on 28 November 1977 cooperatives, named "Les Industries de Palente" (Palente's Industries — Palente was the neighborhood of Besançon where the factory was located, while the acronym remained LIP).

LIP in the 1980s and the 1990s

The brand was bought back by Kiplé in 1984, during François Mitterrand's presidency. However, the new firm was liquidated six years later. Jean-Claude Sensemat then bought the brand in 1990, and relaunched the production with modern marketing methods. The sells increased, with a million watches a year. The LIP reedited Charles de Gaulle's watch, which Jean-Claude Sensemat offered to US president Bill Clinton.

Sensemat signed in 2002 a LIP world licence contract with Jean-Luc Bernerd, who created for the occasion La Manufacture Générale Horlogère in Lectoure Gers.

Lip Précision Industrie

Some former LIP workers returned to work in Palente in the frame of the SCOP cooperative (Société coopérative de production) Lip Précision Industrie, which employs about twenty persons. The cooperative has focused itself on precision mechanics.

Famous models

• T10 (La Croix du Sud) created for Jean Mermoz's plane
• T18 (conceived by André Donat,and produced from 1933 to 1949 — a T18 was offered in 1948 to Winston Churchill)
• l’Electronic (1952 — the first models were weared by Charles de Gaulle and Eisenhower)
• Mach 2000 (Conceived by Roger Tallon, the designor of the TGV fast-speed train)

Bibliography and films

• Maurice Clavel, Les paroissiens de Palente, Grasset, 1974 (novel)
• Jean-Claude Sensemat, Comment j'ai sauvé Lip (period 1990-2005).
• Christian Rouaud, Les Lip, l'imagination au pouvoir (Lip, Imagination to Power — film documentary, 2007)

Sources used in the article

• Articles in the daily press concerning Christian Rouaud's film documentary, "Lip, Imagination to Power":
  • "Ils voulaient un patron, pas une coopérative ouvrière", Le Monde, 20 March 2007
  • "Lip, une mémoire ouvrière", Les Echos, 22 March 2007
  • "Lip Lip Lip hourra !", Libération, 20 March 2007
  • "Lip, c'est pas fini", Politis, 22 mars 2007
• History of the brand Template:En icon
• Documentaire Lip, le rêve et l'histoire
• Presentation of LIP on worldtempus
• Galerie photos
• On the Social conflict :
  • Archives of the Socialist Unified Party (PSU) hosted by the University of Nantes
  • Lip heure par heure, in L'Humanité, 22 October 2005
  • Lip, héros des Temps Modernes in L'Humanité, 18 April 2007

See also

• List of watch manufacturers
• May 68
• Workers' self-management

External links

• Manufacture Générale Horlogère, site marchand des montres Lip
• Lip Canada
• Lip Précision Industrie
• Le grand conflit Lip de 1973 : Site du film Les LIP, l'imagination au pouvoir de Christian Rouaud
• Leçons d'autogestion. Entretien avec Charles Piaget, figure de la lutte des "Lip".