Clandestine years. 40 years of life in Citroën. 40 years of union repression

Abstract

Through a journey of nearly 40 years, this paper reconstructs the development of anti-union policy set up in the French car factory Citroën, considering as milestones the insurrectionary strikes of the biennium 1947-1948, the strikes and occupations of May-June 1968 and the great strikes carried out by immigrants and foreign workers that shook the firm in 1982. We will expose how these anti-union politics were elaborated with sapient mastery, combining managerial paternalism with the illegal use of coercive measures, such as threats to trade unionists and the employment of internal militias. We will also give wide space to workers’ responses, whether organized or individual, and prioritize the activity of class unions within the company, along with the role of independent unions (a characteristic phenomenon of the union French between the sixties and eighties) and the function of the enormous mass of immigrant workers in those factories.

Keyboards: France, Citroën, Union repression, Industrial paternalism, Autonomous unions, Immigration.