Paul Bacon (politician)

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Paul Jean Bacon (* 1. November 1907 in the 18th arrondissement , Paris ; † 6. December 1999 in Gimont , Gers department ) was a French Christian trade union functionary and politician of the Popular Republican Movement (MRP), among others 1946-1958 Member of the National Assembly and Minister of Labor and Social Security several times in the Fourth Republic . Between 1958 and 1962 he was also Minister of Labor in the first governments of the Fifth Republic .

Life

School education and professional activities

Bacon came from a working-class family and was the son of a coachbuilder and a tailor for women's underwear and later a maid. In 1910 his father Laurent Bacon opened a craft business in Gimont, where his son initially attended elementary school before he attended elementary school in Masseube . In May 1916, his father was fatally wounded in the Battle of Verdun , so that Paul Bacon became a half-orphan at the age of nine. In 1919 he moved to Pau for further schooling , where he attended the Ecole primaire supérieure Saint-Cricq there until 1924 . After graduating from the preparatory college (Enseignement primaire supérieur) in the field of arts and crafts in 1924, he worked as a furniture designer in Pau until 1926 and continued his school education in a distance learning course.

Engagement in the Christian labor movement and journalist

During this time, Bacon joined the Christian labor movement (Confédération des travailleurs chrétiens), founded in 1919, and became an active member of the youth organization JOC (Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne) in 1926 after it was founded . After almost a year of unemployment, he returned to Paris in 1927, where he initially found a job in the accounting department and later in the graphics department of a daily newspaper . At the end of 1927 he became a member of the General Secretariat of the JOC and finally Vice-Secretary General of this organization. He then took up a job as a journalist and worked from 1928 to 1936 as editor of Jeunesse ouvrière , the JOC newspaper. In 1929 he founded the publishing house Les Editions ouvrières together with other militant activists of the JOC . He was also the author of regular articles in Christian Democratic magazines such as Sept , which was published by Marie-Vincent Bernadot between March 1934 and August 1937. In 1937 Bacon founded Monde ouvrier , a magazine of the JOC and the popular movement for families (Mouvement populaire des familles) , of which he was also a co-founder.

World War II and post-war period

Member of the Resistance and co-founder of the MRP

After the beginning of the Second World War , Bacon was drafted into military service in 1939, which he completed as a radio operator in the 28th engineer regiment. After the occupation of France by the German Wehrmacht , he returned to civilian life and resumed his trade union activities and was also involved in the Resistance movement . After the liberation of Paris in August 1944, he became a member of the Provisional Consultative Assembly (Assemblée consultative provisoire) in Paris for the Resistance . As early as the spring of 1944, he was the founder and organizer of the workers' representatives in the Republican Movement for Liberation MRL (Mouvement républicain pour la Liberation) , from which the Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP) emerged at the founding congress in November 1944 under the leadership of Georges Bidault .

In 1945, Bacon became a member of the National Bureau and the National Council of the MRP and was a member of these two party bodies until 1958. He also became editor-in-chief of the party newspaper Forces nouvelles and took on leading positions in the trade union movement, such as in 1945 as editor of the magazine Syndicalisme , the organ of the Christian Democratic trade union federation CFTC ( Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens ) . In 1946 he was one of the founders of the Institute for Workers' Culture (Institut de culture ouvrière) , which continued the work of the pre-war workers' centers for education and information, for which Bacon had published several brochures on workers' rights. In addition, he was involved as a member of the National Office of the Semaines sociales de France (SSF), which since 1904 on the basis of the encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII. social weeks organized in France.

Member of the Constituent Assemblies

In the elections of October 21, 1945 for a constituent assembly (Assemblée nationale Constituante) Bacon ran for the MRP in the fourth constituency of the Seine department . The MRP list won 99,748 of the 376,567 votes cast and was able to provide two MPs. Maurice Thorez's list of the Parti communiste français (PCF) received 150,567 votes and four seats, while the list of the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO) received 84,272 votes and received the last two of the eight seats to be allocated in this constituency. After his election, Bacon was elected a member of the Constitutional Committee (Commission de la Constitution) and one of the vice-presidents of the National Constituent Assembly. On April 8, 1946, he introduced a legislative initiative to found a new form of society, the so-called workers and savings societies (Société de travail et d'Épargne) , in which he took up the ideal of the Christian Socialists. Although he voted for the nationalization, he voted against the draft constitution, which was finally rejected on May 5, 1946 in a referendum.

In the new election of a constituent assembly on June 2, 1946, from which the MRP emerged as the leading party, Bacon was re-elected in the fourth constituency of the Seine department. He then became a member of the Rules of Procedure and Petitions Committee (Commission du règlement et des pétitions) as well as the Committee on Labor and Social Security (Commission du travail et de la sécurité sociale) and thereby also became the leading spokesman for the MRP for social affairs. He voted for the constitution of October 13, 1946 , which, after its adoption in a referendum, led to the establishment of the French Fourth Republic on October 21, 1946.

Fourth republic

Elected member of the National Assembly in 1946 and State Secretary

In the elections for the first National Assembly of the Fourth Republic, which took place on November 10, 1946, the list of the PCF in the fourth constituency of the Seine department was in first place with 154,696 of the 371,575 votes cast and received four of the nine seats to be allocated in this constituency. The MRP won two seats with 85,496 votes, the SFIO won one seat with 60,831 votes and the list of a union against these three parties (Union contre le tripartisme) won the last two seats. The re-elected Bacon was then again a member of the Committee on Labor and Social Security, as well as the important finance committee (Commission des finances) and the equally influential press committee (Commission de la presse) . At the same time he was judge on June 7, 1949 at the Supreme Court of Justice (Haute Cour de justice) , two-thirds of which consisted of MPs and a third of other people, and also as a representative of Georges Bidault Vice-Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg .

On October 28, 1949, Bacon was appointed State Secretary to the Prime Minister (Secrétaire d'État à la présidence du Conseil) in his second government by Prime Minister Georges Bidault . At the MRP party convention in Strasbourg in 1949, he spoke on the important issues of social policy and saw himself as a mediator between the government and the trade unions in order to restore the freedom of collective agreements.

Minister for Labor and Social Security 1950 to 1952

After the formation of the third Bidault government , Bacon took over the post of Minister for Labor and Social Security (Ministre du Travail et de la Sécurité sociale) on February 7, 1950 . He also held this ministerial office in the subsequent second government of Prime Minister Henri Queuille from July 2 to 12, 1950, in the first cabinet of René Pleven between July 12, 1950 and March 10, 1951, in the third Queuille government on March 10 to August 11, 1951, in the second Pleven cabinet between August 11, 1951 and January 20, 1952 and finally in the first government of Prime Minister Edgar Faure from January 20 to March 8, 1952. One of his employees at the time as a technical advisor was the future Foreign Minister , Michel Jobert .

During this time, Bacon was one of the initiators of a Supreme Commission for Collective Agreements (Commission supérieure des conventions collectives) on May 8, 1950 . In addition, between 1950 and 1951 he campaigned for the introduction of a job-independent minimum wage, which came about in 1952 after a flexible scale was established based on the rate of price increases. In the area of ​​social security, in March 1951 he presented a reform plan to limit the deficit and to establish parity between the various social benefit providers and to improve benefits.

Re-elected in 1951 and Minister for Labor and Social Security from 1953 to 1954

In the elections to the National Assembly on June 17, 1951, Bacon ran again in the fourth constituency of the Seine department. The list of the PCF again won four of the nine seats to be allocated there with 140,458 of the 366,132 votes cast, while the Gaullist Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) emerged as the second strongest force and got three seats with 99,429 votes. The SFIO with 44,777 votes and the MRP with 33,097 votes each won a mandate that was taken for the MRP by Bacon.

On January 8, 1953, Bacon was reappointed Minister for Labor and Social Security in his cabinet by Prime Minister René Mayer . He held this ministerial office from June 28, 1953 to June 18, 1954 in the subsequent government of Prime Minister Joseph Laniel . During the strikes in August 1953, he used his longstanding association with the Christian Trade Union Confederation CFTC to negotiate with the strikers. It was mainly about overcoming the resistance of Finance and Economics Minister Edgar Faure to the increase in the minimum wage.

Nevertheless, on February 23, 1955, he was appointed to Prime Minister Faure's second government , to which he belonged until February 1, 1956. In this role he was one of the participants in collective bargaining between the social partners. On May 6, 1955, he published a decree in the government bulletin with the aim of promoting a basis for negotiation for the conclusion of collective agreements and wage agreements. He saw it as necessary in particular to amend the law of February 1950, which in his view was unsatisfactory in terms of collective bargaining because of the risk of labor disputes. In 1955 he was also elected a member of the parish council of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés .

Re-elected in 1956

After the dissolution of the National Assembly on December 1, 1955, Bacon again led the list of the MRP in the fourth constituency of the Seine department and was just re-elected in the elections on January 2, 1956 with 34,043 of the 465,075 votes cast. The PCF, which received 37.5 percent of the vote and again provided four of the nine MPs there, underpinned its primacy in this constituency. The four other mandates fell to the SFIO, the Parti radical (PR), the Center national des indépendants (CNI) and a list of the Poujadist Union de défense des commerçants et artisans (UDCA).

After moving back to the Palais Bourbon , Bacon was again a member of the Labor and Social Security Committee and the Press Committee and also a member of the Committee on Universal Suffrage, Constitutional Law, Rules of Procedure and Petitions (Commission du suffrage universel, des lois constitutionnelles, du règlement et des pétitions ) . During the tenure of Prime Minister Guy Mollet between February 1956 and June 1957 he dealt mainly with his parliamentary work in the field of social legislation.

Minister for Labor and Social Security 1957-1958

Bacon was also appointed Minister for Labor and Social Security in his government on November 6, 1957 by Prime Minister Félix Gaillard and held this ministerial office from May 14 to June 1, 1958 in the government formed by Prime Minister Pierre Pflimlin . Subsequently he was from June 1, 1958 to January 8, 1959 Minister of Labor (Ministre du travail) in the third government of Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle .

During this time, he again initiated several legislative projects such as a new version of the social security system, an indexing of family allowances to the cost of living and a reform of the labor courts (Conseil de prud'hommes) and works councils.

Fifth Republic

In the elections for the first National Assembly of the Fifth French Republic, founded on October 5, 1958, on November 30, 1958, Bacon declined to run again for the MRP to the National Assembly.

However, on January 8, 1959, Prime Minister Michel Debre appointed him as Minister of Labor in his cabinet . In this ministerial office he remained in the first government of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, formed on April 16, 1962 . On May 16, 1962, he resigned from his ministerial office and was replaced by Gilbert Grandval .

After leaving the government, Bacon was from 1962 to 1964 a member of the Economic and Social Council (Conseil économique et social) , a body consisting of entrepreneurs, trade unions and other social partners to advise the National Assembly and France . He was also President of the International Center for Vocational and Technical Education in Turin and, between 1966 and 1976, first President of the Study Center for Income and Expenses founded by President Charles de Gaulle, CERC (Center d'études des revenus et des coûts) .

His marriage in 1932 resulted in two children.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexis Noël: L'épopée ordinaire et singulière de Michel Jobert: pour l'honneur de la politique , 2008, ISBN 2-74803-990-4 , p. 298
  2. ^ Debré cabinet
  3. ↑ Michel Debré: Trois Républiques pour une France - tome 3: Gouverner , 1958-1962 , 1988, ISBN 2-22622-570-6 , p. 28 and others
  4. ↑ Pompidou I cabinet
  5. ↑ Eric Roussel: Georges Pompidou , 2004, ISBN 2-70964-102-X
personal data
SURNAME Bacon, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bacon, Paul Jean (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French trade unionist and politician (MRP), member of the National Assembly
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH 18th arrondissement , Paris
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1999
Place of death Gimont , Gers department