Lip (watch manufacturer)

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Lip is a French watch manufacturer based in Besançon , France. The turmoil in the company in the 1970s became a symbol of the conflicts between workers and management in France.

The Lip factory struggled financially in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Management then decided to try to close it. However, after strikes and a highly regarded factory occupation in 1973, Lip was administered by the workers. The laid-off employees were reinstated until March 1974, but the company was liquidated again in the spring of 1976. This led to a new struggle that the Liberation newspaper dubbed " the social conflict of the 1970s".

Charles Piaget , union leader of the Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT), led the strike. The Parti socialiste unifié (Socialist Unity Party) with Pierre Mendès France supported the Autogestion (workers' self-government ).

history

Lip trademark

Emmanuel Lipman and his sons founded a watch workshop under the name Comptoir Lipmann in 1867, which became the Société Anonyme d'Horlogerie Lipmann Frères (Lipmann Brothers watch factory) in 1893 .

The manufacturer launched the Lip stopwatch in 1896. After that, Lip became the company's brand. Around 2,500 units were built each year. The company first produced electromechanical wristwatches called "Electronic" in 1952, which were worn by Charles de Gaulle and Dwight D. Eisenhower , among others . In 1948, Winston Churchill was offered a T18 model.

In the 1960s, however, the highly specialized company ran into financial difficulties. Fred Lip took the company public in 1967 and Ebauches SA , a subsidiary of ASUAG , a large Swiss consortium from which the Swatch Group later merged, took over 33% of the shares.

Meanwhile, the workers organized to improve working conditions. This proved difficult. Charles Piaget, the son of a master watchmaker who had entered the factory as a skilled worker in 1946, became the representative of the CFTC. He later recalled that during this period, during national strikes, only 30 or 40 workers out of 1200 at Lip were on strike. Anyone who went on strike was registered by management and asked to explain why. Semi-skilled workers in production on the assembly line were not allowed to speak during their shift or to move more than 25 centimeters from their workplace.

During the nationwide riots in May 1968 , Lip workers voted to join the general strike . Fred Lip tried to calm the growing discontent. He talked to the organized workers about Taylorism and suggested increasing the number of members in the Comité d'entreprise , the employee representation in the factory, in order to have younger representatives. Although this was forbidden, the organized workers consented and elections were held. Although Fred Lip believed this would allow him to gain more control over the workers, in less than a year all new representatives joined the CFTC. Fred Lip then petitioned the Inspection du Travail (State Labor Inspectorate ) to close down all departments of the company, which included most of the organized workers, including Charles Piaget. However, he offered Piaget a promotion to plant manager. For the next year, the workers blocked all attempts to remove the affected departments and remove machines from the factory.

The Ebauches SA held 1,970 control over 43% of the shares, becoming the largest shareholder. Ebauches then laid off 1,300 employees. The next year the board of directors forced Fred Lip to resign and replaced him with Jacques Saint-Esprit .

Lip built the first French quartz watch in 1973 , but suffered from increasing competition from the USA and Japan. The company had to file for liquidation on April 17, 1973 , which resulted in the immediate resignation of Jacques Saint-Esprit on the same day. In the weeks that followed, the labor disputes at the Lip factory preoccupied the national public and one of the most symbolic social conflicts of the era began after the May 1968 riots. The conflict lasted for several years.

1973: start of the strike and demonstrations

In May 1973, an action committee (Comité d'action) was established, which was influenced by the May 1968 movement. During an extraordinary session of the Works Council on June 12, 1973, workers stumbled upon management plans to restructure and downsize that had been kept secret from them (one note read, "450 à dégager": 450 get rid of). The company then laid off 1,300 workers. Initially, Charles Piaget, now a CFDT functionary and active in the PSU, was against a strike, but for a slowdown in which workers should only work 10 minutes in an hour.

But the workers were angry with the secret restructuring plans and immediately occupied the factory. On the same day, June 12, 1973, they took two managers and an Inspecteur du Travail hostage. According to Piaget, the workers wanted to trade this for "more precise information". However, the three hostages were quickly freed in a violent attack at midnight by the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité , an association of the National Police . According to Piaget, the attack shocked workers who had been careful not to damage the factory in any way during previous strikes.

Without their human hostages, the workers decided to take the materials as bargaining chips to block the restructuring plans. They confiscated 65,000 watches and hid them in various locations. They discussed the moral legitimacy of the measure and wondered if it was a theft and a sin - Catholicism was strong in this region. But Jean Raguenès, a Dominican priest and worker, himself close to Maoism , gave the workers absolution in advance .

Workers also stole the factory's design documents to avoid any risk of competition by keeping these industrial secrets. The following day the workers held a meeting and decided to occupy the factory day and night.

Piaget led the strike. Half of the workers were union members at the time, either the CFDT or the CGT, most of them were members of the CFDT. The leaders were mostly Action Catholique Ouvrière and supporters of education from below , including Charles Piaget, Roland Vittot, Raymond Burgy, Célestin Jean Raguenes and a company executive, Michel Jeanningros. Two women, Jeannine Pierre-Emile and Fatima Demougeot, were also CFDT officials at Lip. Noëlle Dartevelle and Claude Mercet were the representatives of the Confédération générale du travail (CGT).

The workers now decided to open the factory to outsiders; also for journalists. This made them more popular. Jacques Chérêque, the national leader of the CFDT's Metallurgist Section, was initially wary of the Action Committee. When requested by the strikers, he sent a representative, metal worker Fredo Coutet, to discuss the strike with the local CFTC representative. After a week, Coutet was convinced, but Chérêque remained suspicious. At that time, workers were still skeptical of collective self-government and expected a boss. Led by Chérêque, the CFDT was now trying to find an investor to buy a company.

An experience in collective self-government (1973–1974)

On June 15, 1973, a large demonstration of 12,000 people took place in Besançon, a town of average size. Three days later, a workers' meeting decided to continue to manufacture clocks under collective self-government to ensure “socially acceptable wages”. The lip labor dispute was then under the motto C'est possible: on fabrique, on vend, on se paie! (It is possible: we make it, we sell it, we pay ourselves!).

The CGT-CFDT Alliance has now asked Les Cahiers de Mai magazine to help them publish a strike newspaper. Under the name Lip-Unité (Lip Unit), this newspaper would help publicize the movement. In order to be able to restart production in the factory, they sold the watches they had previously confiscated, this time without an employer. In six weeks they were taking the equivalent of half their normal annual income. Michel Rocard, then party secretary of the PSU, participated in the sale of the watches.

"The women question was a revolution within the revolution," Piaget later declared. The majority of the workers at the watch factory were women, especially among the semi-skilled workers ( Ouvrier Spécialisé ) on the assembly line.

The national leadership of the CGT union tried to take control and called meetings during the day against the will of the workers. A large part of the members of the CGT then wanted to switch to the CFDT, and the CGT finally decided to let them go. Despite these tensions with the CGT leadership, Piaget later declared that the "communists remained indispensable."

Jean Charbonnel , Minister for Industrial Development under Pierre Messmer and a historical figure of left Gaullism, appointed Henri Giraud as mediator of the conflict. The government then proposed a new plan to lay off 159 employees (or 180 out of a total of 1,200 employees). On August 3, 1973, the workers turned down this offer. The negotiations between the unions, the action committee and the mediator Giraud started again on August 11th. Four days later, the guard mobile , a military unit, occupied the factory and evicted the workers. The military stayed until February 1974.

After this violent occupation, workers in Besançon and the region decided to go on strike, and workers rushed to the Lip factory to fight the armed forces. Union leaders tried to mediate to prevent any confrontation, but the government continued to make arrests, which led to court convictions in the days that followed.

On September 29, 1973 there was a demonstration in Besançon, where 100,000 people gathered in the pouring rain. The demonstration was called the marche des 100,000 (March of 100,000). Chérêque from the CFDT disapproved of the demonstration for fear that the police would be provoked. An old farmer appeared at Michel Rocard's and told him that at a family gathering he heard that a member of the police special forces boasted that he had thrown more Molotov cocktails and set fire to more cars than the May 68 demonstrators . Rocard decided to send a letter to the organizers of the demonstration to warn them. The demonstration was ultimately non-violent.

End of the first conflict

Prime Minister Pierre Messmer longingly declared on October 15, 1973: “Lip, c'est fini!” (Lip, it's over!). Behind the scenes, some progressive managers from the CNPF union, including Antoine Riboud, CEO of BSN, Renaud Gillet, CEO of the Rhône-Poulenc and José Bidegain, deputy president of the CNPF, tried to find a solution to the conflict. Finally, Claude Neuschwander, Vice Marketing at Publicis Groupe and a member of the PSU, agreed to become operations manager. Lip became a subsidiary of BSN, and Neuschwander managed to get Riboud to bypass the regular checks on weekly reports.

Neuschwander advocated the death of manager capitalism and the rise of financial capitalism . or in the words of L 'Humanité, the transition from paternalistic capitalism under Fred Lip to modern financial capitalism. In the meantime, in addition to the PSU, all left movements supported the experiment of collective self-administration by the Lip. Lip workers took part in the 1973-1974 fight against the extension of the military base in the Causse du Larzac . However, tensions between the CFDT and the CGT unions increased.

The Lip delegation and the factory management signed the Dôle Agreement on January 29, 1974. The Compagnie européenne d'horlogerie, headed by Neuschwander, took control of the Lip. Neuschwander hired 850 former employees in March and the strike was ended. By December 1974 the conflict appeared to be resolved. The workers stopped operating the factory and all employees were reinstated.

However, in May 1974, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing , a representative of free enterprise, was elected President of France with the support of Jacques Chirac . They fought the agreement at a time when layoffs were spreading across France. Former Minister for Industrial Development Jean Charbonnel testified that Giscard had stated: “Lip must be punished. Let them get and stay unemployed. Otherwise they will infect the whole of society ”. According to Charbonnel, employers and the government deliberately "murdered" Chirac Lip.

This was done by confronting the left-wing employer Neuschwander and the company with unforeseen difficulties. Renault , a state-owned company, withdrew its contracts and the Ministry of Industry declined promised financial aid. Contrary to the Dôle Agreement of January 1974, the commercial court ( tribunal de commerce ) demanded that Lip redeem debts of 6 million francs to creditors of the former company.

1976: The second movement

Lip 005.jpg

The shareholders forced Neuschwander to resign on February 8, 1976 and the Compagnie européenne d'horlogerie began the liquidation process in April. The problems between workers and management started again. On May 5, 1976, workers again occupied the factory and began producing watches. The newspaper Liberation , founded by Jean-Paul Sartre three years earlier, printed the headline “Lip, c'est reparti!” (“Lip, it starts again!”). This time no one offered to take over LIP. The company was finally liquidated on September 12, 1977. After long internal debates, on November 28, 1977, the workers set up a cooperative called Les Industries de Palente . Palente was the neighborhood of Besançon where the factory was located. The abbreviation lip remained.

Charles Piaget wrote in Le Quotidien de Paris in 1977 about the experiment of collective self-government:

“A few more than 500 workers are effectively involved in industrial action, rallying every day, nineteen months after they were laid off. That is living proof of democracy. Such a collective force is impossible without the continued application of democracy, without sharing of responsibility and participation of all kinds. It should be emphasized that at Lip, the workers are responsible for about thirty jobs, from the restaurant serving 300 meals a day for 4 Franks served, through a hairdresser for the unemployed, through a legal commission for the same unemployed, through various craft activities, one of which was the game Chômageopoly ["Chômeurs" means unemployment in French], of which more than 6,000 games have already been sold until finally for industrial production. "

The second battle did not end until 1980, when six cooperatives, employing 250 out of a total of 850, were created. Most of the other workers who had joined the fight (around 400) were either employed by the city or were taking early retirement. The cooperatives existed between three and twelve years. Three of them, which have since become public companies, still exist today, each with a hundred employees. For example, some of Lip's former employees came back to work in Palente for the Lip Précision Industrie SCOP ( Société Coopérative de Production ), which employs around twenty people. According to Piaget, the difficulties of the second conflict, compared to the success of the first labor dispute, could be due to the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as president in 1974, whose government decided not to help companies in a difficult situation, and to the oil crisis in 1973 to be declared.

Lip in the 1980s and 1990s

The Lip cooperative was bought back by Kiplé in 1984 during François Mitterrand's presidency. However, the new company was liquidated six years later. Jean-Claude Sensemat then bought the brand in 1990 and restarted production using modern marketing methods. Sales rose to 1 million watches a year. The Lip reissued the Charles de Gaulle watch that Sensemat offered to US President Bill Clinton . In 2002, Sensemat signed a license agreement for Lip with Jean-Luc Bernerd , who founded the Manufacture Générale Horlogère in Lectoure for this purpose .

Piaget is now a member of the AC! ( Agir Ensemble Contre le Chômage ), an association of the unemployed, while the Dominican Raguenès lives in Brazil and supports the movement of soilless agricultural workers .

Well-known models

  • T10 ( La Croix du Sud )
  • T18 designed by André Donat, produced from 1933 to 1949
  • l'Electronic 1952
  • Mach 2000 developed by Roger Tallon , the designer of the TGV high-speed train .

Bibliography and Films

  • Donald Reid: Opening the Gates. The Lip Affair, 1968-1981. London 2018. ISBN 978-1-78663-540-2 ; review
  • Maurice Clavel: Les paroissiens de Palente , Grasset, 1974, ISBN 978-2246000976 .
  • Charles Piaget, Michel Rocard: LIP , Lutter Stock, 1973.
  • Collective of authors: LIP: affaire non classée , Syros, 1975.
  • Christian Rouaud: Les Lip, l'imagination au pouvoir , documentary, 2007.

Web links

Commons : LIP  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Lip Lip Lip hourra! - Liberation. In: liberation.fr. Retrieved July 30, 2012 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Leçons d'autogestion - Mouvements. (No longer available online.) In: mouvements.info. Archived from the original on July 22, 2012 ; Retrieved July 30, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mouvements.info
  3. ↑ Parti socialiste unifié : Un an de lutte chez Lip , supplement to Critique Socialiste , Revue théorique du PSU, n ° 5, 1971.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k LIP, l'imagination au pouvoir, par Serge Halimi (Le Monde diplomatique). In: monde-diplomatique.fr. Retrieved July 30, 2012 .
  5. ↑ a b c d Michel Rocard: “Ils voulaient un patron, pas une coopérative ouvrière”. In: lemonde.fr. Retrieved July 31, 2012 .
  6. ↑ a b c d "Les Lip, l'imagination au pouvoir": le samedi soir et le grand soir. In: lemonde.fr. Retrieved July 31, 2012 .
  7. ^ Parti socialiste unifié: Lip au Féminin , Critique Socialiste, Revue théorique du PSU, n ° 5, 1971.
  8. ^ Lip 1973–74 B&W: an album on Flickr. In: flickr.com. Retrieved July 31, 2012 .
  9. ^ French: "Il Faut Les Punir [Les Lip]. Qu Soient Chômeurs et qu le Restent. ILS Vont Véroler Tout le Corps social. "
  10. ↑ LIP PRECISION INDUSTRIE France. (No longer available online.) In: lip-precision.com. Archived from the original on August 1, 2015 ; Retrieved July 31, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lip-precision.com
  11. ^ LIP: Charles Piaget et les LIP racontent. Postf. De Michel Rocard - Charles Piaget, Michel Rocard - Google Books. In: books.google.de. Retrieved July 31, 2012 .
  12. ^ Lip, affaire non classée ... - Michel Mousel - Google Books. In: books.google.de. Retrieved July 31, 2012 .
  13. ↑ Les Lip - L'imagination au pouvoir (2007) - IMDb. In: imdb.com. Retrieved July 31, 2012 .