WORLD WORLDWILDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #344 - Trade unionism, Obituary: Charles Piaget (1928-2023), self-management activist (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On November 4, Charles Piaget passed away at the age of 96. A union

activist (unionized from his first day of work) at the CFTC then at the
CFDT, activist in the PSU (United Socialist Party), he was above all one
of the leaders at Lip of a "CFDT of struggles" which wanted to be
self-managing . For many, he was one of the major figures in one of the
most emblematic struggles of the second half of the 20th century, that
of the PIL. ---- Charles Piaget, to whom we will return in more detail
in a future issue, participated in setting up a combative union in his
Lip factory in Besançon. He participated in opening his doors to
students in May 68 and from 1973 he fought to ensure that not only his
Lip factory survived, but above all that it returned to those who
produced it.

The slogan "we make, we sell, we pay" remains strong and still relevant
today. Multiple SCOPs will arise as a result of the LIP's
self-management struggle. Charles Piaget was one of those who lived the
self-managing socialist ideal in action. He will also see the betrayal
of the left which, after 1981, did not support the LIP, who were still
mobilized.

 From 1983, Charles Piaget, who took early retirement, moved away from
activism. He returned to it a decade later with the creation of the AC
collective! (Act against unemployment) in Besançon in 1993. From then on
he participated in the mobilizations and remained until the end a
transmitter of the memory of a struggle and a life of combat.

In 2007 he will be active in the debates around Christian Rouaud's film,
Les Lip, l'imagination au power.

On this occasion he gave a brief interview to Alternative libertaire, in
which he gave us in a few words a summary of his experience of the
struggles: "There cannot be a transfer of one struggle to another. Each
conflict is unique. On the other hand, there may be similarities. In my
experience, there are three stages to a struggle. First of all, the
refusal of inevitability, for Lip, was the refusal of closure, which was
not a foregone conclusion since the company's CGT was with the aim of
negotiating a social plan. . Secondly, we must carry out what has been
called "inner conquest", that is to say, convince employees of the need
to fight. Then it is necessary not to close oneself in one's business
and to open the conflict outwards, towards civil society. Furthermore,
the conflict must be an opportunity to deepen democracy, it is necessary
to call into question the primacy of the union vis-à-vis the AG, and to
leave room for the imagination of all the actors in a conflict. The
people in the struggle are evolving, some people who were previously in
the background are asserting themselves in the conflict and becoming
essential actors and actresses in the strike.»[1]

David (UCL Savoies)

To validate

[1]Charles Piaget (ex-Lip): "Conflict must be an opportunity to deepen
democracy", Alternative Libertaire, May 2007

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Necrologie-Charles-Piaget-militant-autogestionnaire
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