Based on a thesis, this book traces the lives and struggles of Algerian
workers at the Renault factories in Billancourt. Between 1946 and the1970s, the factories increasingly hired Algerian workers. These workers
unwittingly participated in the modernization and transformation of the
automotive industry at a time when the use of labor was more profitable
for company managers than the automation of production lines. By relying
on this lower-paid and less-trained workforce, management was able to
lower production costs. The second part of the book focuses on analyzing
the particularly difficult working conditions for this specific group,
who were systematically required to perform the most arduous and least
skilled tasks. Algerian workers at Renault were always considered and
referred to as skilled workers. Hiring and exploitation are always
carried out so that they are assigned the most arduous tasks, further
leading to ongoing discrimination against this group.
Finally, she emphasizes that this system, largely inherited from
colonial discrimination, generates chain reactions. First, it arouses
the mistrust of some of the factory workers who see Algeria more as a
competitor than as an exploited group, even though some of the workers
show solidarity with the Algerian workers. Second, she studies the
politicization of these workers through two main vectors. First, support
for the struggle for Algerian independence. Subsequently, several
minority groups joined trade union organizations and sometimes Leninist
parties, primarily the French Communist Party (PCF). It was in the 1970s
that the question of the condition of Algerian workers arose with the
major strikes by unskilled workers, the initial training of some
activists in the struggle for independence having strongly contributed
to their politicization.
Laure Pitti
Algerians at Work, a Postcolonial History
A Survey of Immigrant Workers in the Automotive Industry in France
during the Trente Glorieuses (Glorious Thirty Years).
Presses universitaires de Rennes 2025, 348 pp. EUR25
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8451
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