Louis Saillant

Louis Saillant (* 27. November 1910 in Valence , Drôme , † 28. October 1974 in Paris ) was a French trade union functionary .

Life

Saillant was initially a worker in the furniture industry and was already secretary of the union of workers in the furniture industry in Valence in 1929 and secretary of this union in the Drôme department in 1931. After he became secretary of the woodworkers' union of France in 1937, he became a functionary of the Confédération générale du travail (CGT) in 1938 and as its representative on May 27, 1943 a member of the National Council of the Resistance Movement ( Conseil national de la Résistance ) . On September 15, 1944, he succeeded Georges Bidault as President of the Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR).

In 1945 he was elected General Secretary of the CGT and held this position until 1948. In addition, he was elected General Secretary of the World Trade Union Confederation at the 1st World Trade Union Congress in Paris in October 1945 . He held this position after his re-election at the II Congress in Milan in 1949 , III. Congress 1953 in Vienna , IV. Congress 1957 in Leipzig , V. Congress 1961 in Moscow and VI. Congress in Budapest in 1965 until October 1969. In 1958, Saillant, one of the actors in the Stockholm appeal to outlaw nuclear weapons in March 1950, was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize.

Successor as Secretary General was Pierre Gensous , who later became director of the institute Louis Saillant / Center d'étude, de recherche et de coopération internationale (ILS-CERCI, Center for Studies, Research and International Cooperation) of the CGT, named after Saillant .

Publications

• The importance of the trade union elections 1952/53 , Berlin 1952 (co-authors Kurt Meier and Herbert Warnke ).

Web links and sources

• Meyers Großes Personenlexikon , Mannheim 1968, p. 1145
• Louis Saillant in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Biography in the Encyclopédie Larousse (French)
• Newspaper article about Louis Saillant in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .