Syndicat des Maçons de Lyon et du Rhône
The Maurer - and stonemasons - union Syndicat des Maçons de Lyon et du Rhone defended the interests of construction workers in the from the mid-19th century, rapidly growing into the surrounding French metropolis and industrial city of Lyon . It led its two most important labor disputes in 1897 and 1910. At the beginning, the majority of its members were migrant workers from the Limousin , an agricultural region in central France. It later integrated into the structures of the Confédération générale du travail (CGT).
history
A predecessor union was formed in 1877 and organized its first strikes in 1879 and 1880 . In her second labor dispute, she was able to push through wage increases, but not achieve a collective labor agreement . The level of organization of the workforce remained low until the mid-1890s. In 1882 it had 120 members. On the other side, an employers' chamber was set up in 1863 , called the Chambre syndicale des entrepreneurs de travaux de bâtiment de la Ville de Lyon , which in 1865 succeeded in ending a major strike by recruiting workers in the Kingdom of Sardinia. Piedmont had threatened. Another strike had preceded the formation of the union in 1869–1870. This was ended prematurely when the Franco-German war broke out and then became the uprising of the bloody defeated commune .
After the poor economic situation from 1884 to 1888 made any significant mobilization impossible, around 60 of the most active members separated from the predecessor union Chambre syndicale in December 1890 and founded the Syndicat Général des Maçons . Management was taken over by a trade union council consisting of 9 people, which from 1894 consisted of 6 members. According to police reports, their orientation was "socialist-revolutionary". The members were no longer separated according to occupation as before, but were organized geographically. Three sections were created: in the 3rd arrondissement of Lyon (la Guillotière), with a meeting room at 20 rue Moncey; in the 5th arrondissement (Vaise); as well as a section for the surrounding communities of Oullins , Pierre-Bénite and Saint-Genis-Laval . The headquarters were initially set up at 93 rue Moncey and, from 1893, at 176 avenue de Saxe. During this period, the union supported Antoine Desfarges' candidacy , which led to a dispute with the previous union and threatened to split the movement.
With the improvement in the economic situation, the relationship relaxed, so that in 1894 the 1st National Construction Workers Congress with 19 participating unions could take place in the Bourse de Travail de Lyon . The plans discussed there for a nationwide federation and the founding of a newspaper could not be realized, but the two local unions decided on January 5, 1895 to merge. In 1896 they had a total of 200 members, but these were sufficiently powerful to get through an almost three-month strike from May 10 to July 28, 1897 to enforce the wage rates negotiated with employers in 1880 . Police reports and employers assumed membership numbers to be around 8,200 workers, which was far above the real conditions.
Thousands of workers demonstratively left the city in mid-May 1897 to take work in the countryside. Some found a temporary livelihood in their villages of origin in central France, which greatly relieved the strike fund . At the same time, the number of members actually increased. The small trade in Lyon also showed solidarity with the strikers and made it possible for working-class families to write letters to buy groceries. Other detailists had to be forced to cooperate. Anyone who refused anyway was later systematically boycotted . Around 1000 workers kept the job exchange and the building site accesses occupied. This made it possible to keep the number of strikebreakers low until the end. Lists of these so-called "renégats" were continuously updated and republished. In this way, some workers could be persuaded to join the strike in return for payment of a tax calculated on the number of working days. As a result, they would no longer appear on the next edition of the list.
Also in 1897, strikers in Lyon carried out demonstrations for the first time, for which 15 funerals of workers and their families were used, which each time mobilized between 500 and 1500 participants. Revolutionary demands were also made during the funeral speeches. Meanwhile, a violent dispute broke out in the employers' chamber between medium-sized and larger entrepreneurs, with the dominant builders being accused by their smaller competitors of having caused the conflict that they now had to pay for through lower wages. An emergency fund was set up for financially distressed entrepreneurs. The strike ended with partial success for the union, which achieved collective bargaining wage increases and other improvements.
The demand for the eight-hour day was now louder. However, the union, whose members were mostly the sons of small farmers, cut itself off from other workers' unions that represented a proletariat born in Lyon . The focus was on solidarity between the immigrants from the Massif Central . For this reason, the Syndicat des Maçons stayed away from the nationwide general strike called by the CGT on May 1, 1906, and was not part of the Ligue d'action du bâtiment (LAB), which was formed in Lyon in 1908 , in its initial phase . After the success of 1897, the union organized a series of smaller strikes to enforce what had been achieved. In 1906 it had around 600 members. In addition, the “red” Syndicat des Maçons now faced competition from a “yellow” union, which had 164 members in the same year. Groups close to employers were designated as yellow unions .
Starting in 1908, young members of the Syndicat des Maçons began to bring them closer to the more radical CGT, which had only just emerged at the time. This was at the time in the midst of a confrontation with the central government after there had been industrial peace under the government of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau (1899–1902) when the workers did not use their own demands to provide an excuse for a conservative coup on the part of the enemies of Alfred Dreyfus wanted to deliver. After the change of government, the CGT went on the offensive with the eight-hour day. But the strikes were ended by violence by then Interior Minister Georges Clemenceau . The situation escalated when the 1906 mining disaster at Courrières , in northern France, killed 1,100 miners. In 1907 the conflict shifted to the south, where soldiers fired at striking winegrowers. On June 2, 1908, the gendarmerie shot strikers from the Saine sand works in Draveil (Draveil-Villeneuve-Saint-Georges).
The experiences that the trade unionists of the Syndicat des Maçons had with the Clemenceau government, branded by the CGT as a "murderous government", led to their increasing radicalization. The new generation had largely given up the hopes for social improvements that their fathers had linked to republicanism. The fight to go a monarchy had long since disappeared from view. Words like “citoyens” disappeared from the vocabulary and people were now addressed with the socialist “camarade”. In November 1906, the Syndicat des Maçons became a member of the Fédération des ouvriers du bâtiment de France .
On March 12, 1910, the union declared a strike lasting over four months, ending on July 15. Once again, thousands of bricklayers and stonemasons left the construction sites and moved to the villages, where they paid a daily rate of 1 or 1.5 francs to the strike fund. The most active collected these in the country. In doing so, and also when monitoring the construction sites on strike, the now generally affordable bicycle became an important tool. There were repeated violent clashes between strikers and strike breakers. Another strike followed in 1910, this time under the leadership of the 25-year-old bricklayer Antoine Charial . The strike led, through the mediation of Lyon's mayor Édouard Herriot and thanks to municipal subsidies, to renewed concessions on wages and accident protection . Membership in the union was now de facto compulsory and anyone named as a strike breaker had little chance of finding work on construction in Lyon.
The trade union newspaper L'ouvrier maçon first appeared in July 1911 . In January 1912 they called the number of 3175 members. The city administration, for its part, spoke of 3320 members in 1913. This corresponded to an organization level of almost 75% of all masons and stonemasons in Lyon. A total of 76 strikes were counted for the entire construction industry from 1910 to 1914. With the election of Antoine Charial as CGT secretary of the Département Rhône in 1913, the merger with the CGT was sealed. Adrien Lemasson took over the management of the Syndicat des Maçons.
As part of the union movement, the Syndicat des Maçons took part in the creation of the L'Avenir production and housing cooperative. From the mid-1920s it opened up to foreign workers, who came mainly from the Italian province of Frosinone , as well as from Spain, Switzerland, and from the 1930s from Algeria. From February 1927, the newspaper L'Effort replaced the previous L'Ouvrier maçon . This was now aimed at members of all construction professions in Lyon. In the same year, the union bought the Traquet printing company, which was renamed Imprimerie Intersyndicale Lyonnaise and which had 10,000 copies of the newspaper. The number of members rose to 5391 in 1930. Lyon experienced a total of 89 strikes in the construction industry from 1919 to 1935. The influence of the Parti communiste français increased steadily. With the nationwide general strike in June 1936, the CGT became the most powerful union in France.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean-Luc de Ochandiano: Lyon, un chantier limousin - Les maçons migrants (1848-1940) . 2nd Edition. Éditions Lieu Dits, Lyon 2011, ISBN 978-2-36219-044-5 , pp. 176-246 .