Dockworkers in struggle in Dunkirk ---- "Revenge for the vanquished!"
---- A meeting between former dockworkers from the Dunkirk docks, now
united around a social and solidarity economy project, and a young
journalist with no experience in either business creation or working
conditions and struggles in ports. Antoine Tricot is not from this
world; he knows it and writes about it, but he searches, he gets
involved like Albert Londres and Janet Malcom, he delves into memories
and stories. The result is a warm, human book about the lives of these
men who want to work, to work some more, these Dockworkers in struggle
in Dunkirk, a book published by Créaphis. Since 1947, dockworkers had
enjoyed a special status: that of independent, intermittent workers,
free to choose and organize their work as they saw fit. The strength of
the union, the CGT Ports and Docks Federation, protected them from the
companies. In 1992, a law abolished this status. This led to a two-year
strike and a rift within the dockworkers' collective. Some accepted
being paid monthly, while others intended to maintain their previous
status and create a power dynamic to assert their existence.
Antoine Tricot has made it his mission to "try to help those who didn't
experience it understand this workers' adventure at the crossroads of
centuries." The photos accompanying the testimonies show the docks now
devoid of activity, empty buildings, somewhat like the Renault site on
Île Seguin in Billancourt, for examplea poignant moment for those in the
working class who once knew these places bustling with activity. But
first, we must delve into the history. The dockworkers' labor is evoked
throughout the testimonies: accidents, "crazy work rates," but also the
pride in the world of work so often mentioned in this type of book,
which I regularly refer to in this column (see, in particular, "Des
idées et des luttes"[Ideas and Struggles], November 19, 2023, Samuel
Guicheteau, Manuella Noyer, Christophe Patillon, Dockers - une histoire
nantaise, travailler et lutte sur les quais (XVIe-XXe siècle)[Dockers -
A Nantes History, Working and Struggling on the Docks (16th-20th
Centuries)], Ed. du Centre d'histoire du travail, 2023).
"It comes from the grassroots."
As the pages turn, the class struggle becomes a lived reality, a logic
of "us" versus "them," with class contempt as its driving force. Three
thousand dockworkers are mobilized at the port, their rallying point the
CGT union hall, L'Avenir newspaper, a communist culture tinged with
anarcho-syndicalism. "It comes from the bottom up." The strike is harsh,
marked by clashes, divided families, suffering, and union members
imprisoned and then acquitted by the courts. The employers' objective:
to oust the leaders by hiding behind supposed realities: the evolution
of work, tools, methods, and international trade. These realities are
objective, but no fundamental dialogue is ever initiated. Then one day,
these union members find themselves out on the street, without work.
Should they create a movement of the unemployed? Like in the 19th
century, singled out and rejected, these dockworkers mobilize. "Staying
together, creating our own jobs, and identifying the needs that
capitalism doesn't meet."
Builders of a Solidarity Economy
So they created an association, Together for the Future, then a company,
BES (Wood Environment Services), to assert their dignity through work.
Equality, the principle of one person, one vote, the collective governed
by solidarity. This is BES's entry into the social and solidarity
economy. Working on innovation and ecology. They know ecology, but in
the context of working conditions that slowly kill. The chapter on
asbestos is evocative, a long battle against employers manipulating
procedures until the victims are worn down. "It's the adversaries'
strategies again. They tire us out, they drive us crazy, they wear us
down. And then they wait for us to die."
They invent projects, their company evolves because it mustn't
disappear. The daughter of one of them works there. Let's hear what she
has to say: "To think that the company was created by these former
dockworkers whom no one else wanted to hire... So yeah, revenge for the
vanquished!" For them, work is certainly a form of exploitation, but
"also an emancipation." Let's allow Antoine Tricot to conclude: "Let's
learn from this small group that didn't relinquish its collective power
and refused to abandon a know-how that allowed it to bend something much
bigger than itself. A profession like a promise, the promise of being
part of something, of being someone, of living with one's head held high
in dignity."
* Antoine Tricot
Working, working again,
Dockworkers in struggle in Dunkirk
Ed. Créaphis, 2025
https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8641
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
---- A meeting between former dockworkers from the Dunkirk docks, now
united around a social and solidarity economy project, and a young
journalist with no experience in either business creation or working
conditions and struggles in ports. Antoine Tricot is not from this
world; he knows it and writes about it, but he searches, he gets
involved like Albert Londres and Janet Malcom, he delves into memories
and stories. The result is a warm, human book about the lives of these
men who want to work, to work some more, these Dockworkers in struggle
in Dunkirk, a book published by Créaphis. Since 1947, dockworkers had
enjoyed a special status: that of independent, intermittent workers,
free to choose and organize their work as they saw fit. The strength of
the union, the CGT Ports and Docks Federation, protected them from the
companies. In 1992, a law abolished this status. This led to a two-year
strike and a rift within the dockworkers' collective. Some accepted
being paid monthly, while others intended to maintain their previous
status and create a power dynamic to assert their existence.
Antoine Tricot has made it his mission to "try to help those who didn't
experience it understand this workers' adventure at the crossroads of
centuries." The photos accompanying the testimonies show the docks now
devoid of activity, empty buildings, somewhat like the Renault site on
Île Seguin in Billancourt, for examplea poignant moment for those in the
working class who once knew these places bustling with activity. But
first, we must delve into the history. The dockworkers' labor is evoked
throughout the testimonies: accidents, "crazy work rates," but also the
pride in the world of work so often mentioned in this type of book,
which I regularly refer to in this column (see, in particular, "Des
idées et des luttes"[Ideas and Struggles], November 19, 2023, Samuel
Guicheteau, Manuella Noyer, Christophe Patillon, Dockers - une histoire
nantaise, travailler et lutte sur les quais (XVIe-XXe siècle)[Dockers -
A Nantes History, Working and Struggling on the Docks (16th-20th
Centuries)], Ed. du Centre d'histoire du travail, 2023).
"It comes from the grassroots."
As the pages turn, the class struggle becomes a lived reality, a logic
of "us" versus "them," with class contempt as its driving force. Three
thousand dockworkers are mobilized at the port, their rallying point the
CGT union hall, L'Avenir newspaper, a communist culture tinged with
anarcho-syndicalism. "It comes from the bottom up." The strike is harsh,
marked by clashes, divided families, suffering, and union members
imprisoned and then acquitted by the courts. The employers' objective:
to oust the leaders by hiding behind supposed realities: the evolution
of work, tools, methods, and international trade. These realities are
objective, but no fundamental dialogue is ever initiated. Then one day,
these union members find themselves out on the street, without work.
Should they create a movement of the unemployed? Like in the 19th
century, singled out and rejected, these dockworkers mobilize. "Staying
together, creating our own jobs, and identifying the needs that
capitalism doesn't meet."
Builders of a Solidarity Economy
So they created an association, Together for the Future, then a company,
BES (Wood Environment Services), to assert their dignity through work.
Equality, the principle of one person, one vote, the collective governed
by solidarity. This is BES's entry into the social and solidarity
economy. Working on innovation and ecology. They know ecology, but in
the context of working conditions that slowly kill. The chapter on
asbestos is evocative, a long battle against employers manipulating
procedures until the victims are worn down. "It's the adversaries'
strategies again. They tire us out, they drive us crazy, they wear us
down. And then they wait for us to die."
They invent projects, their company evolves because it mustn't
disappear. The daughter of one of them works there. Let's hear what she
has to say: "To think that the company was created by these former
dockworkers whom no one else wanted to hire... So yeah, revenge for the
vanquished!" For them, work is certainly a form of exploitation, but
"also an emancipation." Let's allow Antoine Tricot to conclude: "Let's
learn from this small group that didn't relinquish its collective power
and refused to abandon a know-how that allowed it to bend something much
bigger than itself. A profession like a promise, the promise of being
part of something, of being someone, of living with one's head held high
in dignity."
* Antoine Tricot
Working, working again,
Dockworkers in struggle in Dunkirk
Ed. Créaphis, 2025
https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8641
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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