"Workers
fortress"
falls THE huge Renault auto plant in the industrial suburb of Billancourt just outside of Paris closed its gates for good on March 27. For decades Billancourt was laden with symbolism for the most varied audiences.
Admirers of capitalist rationality and efficiency once hailed Renault's vast assembly-line manufacturing system as the wave of the future. For militant workers and sympathetic labor historians the "Workers' Fortress" was a prime example of the degrading and de-humanizing conditions of the modern factory regime as well as a model of worker militancy. As early as the 1950s, some industrial sociologists pointed to the decline of factories like Renault as indicative of what they saw as the diminishing power and relevance of the industrial working class. KEITH MANN B ILLANCOURT saw a million men and women pass through its gates on the small island in the Seine called the lle Seguin since it opened in 1929. At its height in 1939, the plant employed 37,000 employees making it one of the largest factories in the world (though signifi-
April 27, 1992 cantly smaller than Ford's River Rouge plant which employed 106,000 workers at its height).
### Modern and audacious industrial techniques
The mechanical-minded Louis Renault, who along with his older brothers Marcel and Fernand launched their auto company in 1898, was an early proponent of the most modern and audacious industrial techniques. Renault returned from a trip to the United States where he met Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford deeply impressed by the possibilities for increased production and lower labor costs that assembly line techniques offered.
As elsewhere, the influence of American industrial techniques was great in France where the terms "Fordism" and "Taylorism" entered into everyday usage. With the installation of the assembly line in 1930, annual auto production at Billancourt reached 53,000. By 1969 advanced technological methods and debilitating methods of speed-up allowed the Billancourt plants to produce up to 1,100 cars a day.
The Renault plants were a prime example of "vertical integration"; Renault produced nearly everything needed to construct its cars. It had its own foundry and forge and produced its own tires following a dispute over prices with Michelin in the 1930's.
The introduction of these techniques on a grand scale made Renault's Billancourt factories a prime example of the second industrial revolution. This specific phase of industrial capitalism, which arose in all industrialized countries around the turn of the century, was founded on the steel, chemical and electrical industries, as opposed to the coal, textile and iron industries which formed the basis of the first industrial revolution a century earlier.
The second industrial revolution was characterized by large-scale capital concentration and the introduction of mechanized machinery that led to increased division of labor. These technological innovations were designed to strip skilled workers of the control they exerted over the labor process through their knowledge of skills acquired through long years of apprenticeship. The introduction of mechanized machinery allowed employers to dispense with skilled labor in favor of easily replaced factory hands.
Employers like Renault were to learn however, that the sociological changes that flowed from mechanization and increased division of labor were a double edged sword; while these innovations permitted boosted production and a labor market weighted more in their favor, they also broke down many of the craft prejudices and divisions that had cut across class solidarities. It was no accident therefore, that the most stunning examples of mass, unified working class militancy in this century occurred precisely in the steel mills and auto plants of North America and Europe in the 1930's.
The strike wave of the spring of 1936 that saw nearly two and a half million workers throughout France down their tools and four million join unions, marked the entry onto the scene of the semi-skilled worker - the famous "O.S."- French equivalent of the unskilled "men from nowhere" who built the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO)
A citadel of workers' resistance
Louis Renault was an innovator in matters of repression as well. In the 1930's there were as many as 1,500 paid informers among the employees. Management's efforts to undermine union representation included the setting up of a company union in 1929.
But Billancourt was as much a citadel of worker resistance and militancy as it was a model for admirers of capitalist efficiency and rationality.
In spite of the repression, workers at Renault were among the most combative in France. Between 1915 and 1935 over 1% of all strikers in France were workers from Billancourt. It was precisely Renault's efforts at rationalization that provoked many of the most bitter conflicts. As early as 1912 strikes against the introduction of the chronometer took place. From the 1920's on, the local workers' press was full of reports complaining about four particularly pernicious aspects of rationalization: de-skilling, speed-up, lack of hygiene in the plants, and a disturbingly high rate of accidents.
The French Communist Party (PCF) which represented the majority of the Socialist Party (SFIO) that had split at the congress of Tours in December 1920 paid particular attention to the Renault plant. Well known party leaders gave impromptu soap-box speeches at the entrances and exits of the plant at shift changes.
### Shop floor organizing
As early as 1921 PCF militants organized in plant factory cells were circulating petitions and collecting funds in
FRANCE As Billancourt closed, Euro-Disneyland opened in the outskirts of Paris... favor of the Soviet Union and PCF election campaigns. The Renault cell even had its own newspaper The Renault
Two more cells including one for young workers were set up following the fifth congress of the Communist International in 1924 which instructed Communist Parties throughout the world to orient to the most exploited layers of the working class. In an industrialized country like France this meant orienting to the semi-skilled assemblyline workers who increasingly took the place of the skilled artisan.
PCF presence in the plant fluctuated widely throughout the 1920's as layoffs and company repression often reduced the number of PCF militants to a handful. The PCF rode the crest of the strike wave of 1936 which began at Billancourt, enrolling 7,000 Renault workers from the Billancourt plants (out of a workforce of 30,000!) into the party in the spring of that year.
Union implantation at the plant followed a similar rhythm. But building durable trade union structures in the years of depression, repression and layoffs at Renault in the late 1920's and early 1930's were complicated by the split in the French trade union movement that followed the split of the SFIO and the founding of the PCF. Two unions - the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and the PCF-inspired United General Confederation of Labor (CGTU) vied for the loyalty of Renault's workers. The CGT was reunited on the eve of the Popular Front in 1934. During the sit-down strike of 1 1 1936 CGT membership jumped from
April 27, 1992
FRANCE / IRELAND 700-25,000 members!
The importance of Billancourt in the constellation of Renault's works declined sharply in the years that followed. In 1951 the company opened a plant in the west Paris suburb of Flins which soon employed 68% of the Renault workforce. Another plant at Cléon was opened in 1958 where motors were built. By 1975 the Billancourt workfor-
THE abortion issue continues to be the lead story in the
Irish media. The political storm that erupted when a fourteen year old pregnant rape victim seeking an abortion in Britain was forbidden to leave the country ce was down to 17,000 and only 5,800 by a High Court ruling - subsequently overturned by the workers were punching in at Billancourt Supreme Court — continues unabated. (See IV No 224, by 1987.
Over the last 25 years the composition
Anne Conway of Peoples Democracy, Irish section of the of the workforce at the Renault plants reflected the changing character of the Fourth International, tells us the latest developments. working class in advanced industrialized countries. Beginning in 1966 the company began to massively recruit immigrant labor. Soon after, fully three quarters of the unskilled workers were immigrants. In the years that followed, 59 different nationalities were represented at Billancourt.
### Ideological campaign
Ruling class ideologists will no doubt point to the demise of the Billancourt plants as emblematic not only of the decline of large scale manufacturing in advanced industrialized countries like France, but of the disappearance of the industrial working class itself as well.
Such arguments coincide with the ideological triumphalism that holds that Marxism has been refuted and that history itself has ended with the failure of "communism" and the "victory" of capitalism. They are aided by more than a few of the radical labor historians and industrial sociologists who built academic careers around problems of labor history in the 1970s and 1980s but who are today questioning the very concept of class and its corollary class struggle as relevant social categories and
However, while the closing of factories like Renault at Billancourt is perhaps symbolic of the passing of a specific phase of industrial production, the current transformations of production and of the working class itself - which in many respects are only newer forms of Taylorism - will only result in an even more exploited and alienated working class and societies with more, rather than less, social contradictions.
In the long run, there is no reason to believe that the current transformations underway will ultimately reduce workers' capacity for struggle any more than the innovations of Henry Ford, Louis Renault and the other "captains of industry" of the second industrial revo12 lution did in their day. * International Viewpoint # 227
March 16, 1992) ANNE CONWAY
HE ongoing political crisis on abortion is centred around how to implement the Supreme Court ruling that abortion is allowable where there is substantial risk to the life of the mother. The first proposal was to amend the protocol to the Maastricht Treaty which prevents any attempt to challenge the anti-abortion clause in the Irish constitution on the basis of European Commnnity law to allow the right to information on abortion and and for Irish women to have the right to travel. The government hoped this would avoid a separate referendum on abortion. However, after lengthy toings and froings on the exact wording within the governmental parties (Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats) and with the opposition (Fine Gael and Labour), a majority of the other European Community member states refused to allow any amendment for fear that this would open a Pandora's box and that other countries would move to seek derogations or protocols on a variety of national issues.
Once the proposed amendment to the protocol was turned down in Europe, the government decided immediately to go ahead with the Maastricht Treaty constitutional referendum on June 18, leaving the protocol in place, with the promise of a referendum on information and travel to take place later in the year.
The decision to leave the protocol in the Treaty and proceed with the referendum on Maastricht has provoked widespread opposition. The Repeal the Eighth Amendment Campaign recently publicly launched the campaign and received extensive coverage in the national media. The Campaign has sponsorship from some 30 organizations and groups — the National Union of Students in Ireland has affiliated as has the Dublin Council of Trade Unions. A coalition is developing of various organizations - the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, voluntary organizations, women's organizations and others. The campaign is involved in organizing a number of major public activities that should put the campaign firmly on the map.
This has also put the "left" parties under pressure — the new Democratic Left (a split from the old Stalinist Workers Party, the Labour Party and the new state-sponsored Council for the Status of Women. All have either called for the protocol to be dropped or a referendum on information and travel to be held before the Maastricht
The main opposition party, Fine Gael, pays lip-service to women's rights but their main anxiety is that Maastricht might not be passed because of the abortion controversy. Opposition to Maastricht from this coalition of the left parties — who are under increasing pressure on the issue - together with the huge numbers of alienated people in the communities and among youth could jeopardize the passing of the Treaty. This is a possibility that the ruling class cannot risk.
### Statement by Roman
Catholic bishops
It is against this background that the Roman Catholic bishops have made a major statement affirming the right to life of the unborn without any reference to the right to life of their mother. They have called for a new referendum on the right to life of the unborn and are in the process of briefing priests on the issues involved. Another round of pulpit bashing is to be expected as occurred in 1983 in their campaign to have Article 40.3.3 passed. Their statement is a warning to the campaign that if Maastricht is passed it will be business as usual — a witch-hunt against women's rights.
The campaign has been lobbying all progressive organizations in Europe and European parliamentarians to ask the Irish
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