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“We won't go back home!” Women's Experiences with Deindustrialization and Unemployment at Fiat and LIP, a Comparative Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2024
Abstract
This article stems from a project aiming to investigate women's unemployment in the phase of deindustrialization that affected Western European countries from the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. Countries such as Italy and France, with both a strong working-class movement and a vibrant feminist movement, have had to face economic crises since the mid-seventies and from the eighties have witnessed how neoliberal capitalism started to heavily reshape the global labor market. The old stereotype of female salary as ‘pin money’ within the household budget was again publicly put forth. How did women experience unemployment? What did it mean in terms of their social status, economic independence, sense of self, relationship to the home? To answer these questions and to understand the reconfiguration of class and gender identities, I focus on two milestone cases of labour struggles that are recognized as turning points in the history of the affirmation of neoliberal dynamics: the crisis of FIAT in Italy and of LIP in France. Despite their being at the center of many academic investigations as fundamental sites of resistance, their outcomes in terms of unemployment and particularly the gender dimension of this phenomenon have been largely overlooked so far. I will delineate a comparison between the two cases by drawing on my past research about trade union feminism in the two countries, on archival sources, published accounts and oral histories of two key activists in these struggles. Key factors that will be analysed are: women's participation in the collective mobilisations in the face of unemployment, their relation to the domestic sphere and to care work, their ability to build female networks within their wounded communities.
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- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc.
Footnotes
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The research for this article was made possible by a grant from the Edith Saurer Fund.
References
Notes
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2. For the Italian case, see the works by the group for the research on the family and on the female condition (GRIFF), informally founded in 1973 and later officially integrated as a lab at the University of Milan: Laura Balbo, Marina Bianchi, Lorenza Zanuso, Elisabeth Wilson, eds., Doppia presenza e mercato del lavoro (1978), 32. For the French case, see the survey conducted by sociologist Madelaine Guilbert for the union Céntral Général du Travail (CGT) and available at the Institut d'Histoire Sociale, 43 CFD 5 = Inchieste, f.1, Centre Confederal d'Etudes Economiques et Sociales CGT, Enquete sur les ouvrières et les employées (December 1975).
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6. See the coverage launched by international media, such in the case of Patricia Cohen, “Recession With a Difference: Women Face Special Burden,” The New York Times, November 17, 2020.
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14. As highlighted by Cédric Afsa Essafi and Sophie Buffeteau: “Women have been affected by the labor market crisis that began with the first oil shock and worsened thereafter. Men have not been preserved, but their unemployment rate was below the female rate” in their article “L'activité féminine en France : quelles évolutions récentes, quelles tendances pour l'avenir ?” Économie et Statistique 398–399 (2006): 85–97.
15. In the deregulation process affecting women's participation in the labor market, a crucial role is played by forms of flexible/precarious work. See Maruani, Margaret, “L'emploi féminin à l'ombre du chômage,” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 115 (1996): 48 –57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16. See, for example, a declaration of the General Office of the French trade union “Confédération Général du Travail,” published March 8, 1979: “Speculating both on the dramatic situation of unemployment […] a campaign against women's work is conducted.” Document preserved at the Institut d'Histoire Sociale, box 43 CFD 10 file 7. See also this report, from Toulouse: “At the municipal congress in February 1977 a comrade said that if women remained at home, there would be more job for men…”. IHS, box 43 CFD 35 file 2. [Translations are mine]
17. See Didier Demazière, “Les femmes et le chômage,” SociologieS [En ligne], Théories et recherches, mis en ligne le 21 février 2017, consulté le 22 février 2017, available at: http://sociologies.revues.org/5966.
18. See Didier Demazière, “The Boundaries of Unemployment Institutional Rules and Real-Life Experiences,” in The deconstruction of employment as a political question. ‘Employment’ as a Floating Signifier, eds. Amparo Serrano-Pascual and Maria Jepsen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
19. See Susan Gal, “A Semiotic of the Public/Private Distinction,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 13 (Spring 2002): 77–95.
20. About the fact that collective bargaining, legislative initiatives, and individual responses to unemployment may vary significantly according to national settings, leading to different strategies put into place to tackle this issue, see Didier Demazière, Olivier Giraud, and Michel Lallement, “Comparer. Options et inflexions d'une pratique de recherche,” Sociologie du travail 55 (2013).
21. See Marica Tolomelli, L'Italia dei movimenti. Politica e società nella Prima repubblica (Roma: Carocci, 2015). See also Xavier Vigna, L'insubordination ouvrière dans les années 68. Essai d'histoire politique des usines (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007).
22. In 1977, France saw a female employment rate, for the age group 15–64 years, of 54.8 percent. In Italy, this rate was 33.5 percent. Data respectively from INSEE (https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/6047733?sommaire=6047805#consulter) and ISTAT (https://www.istat.it/it/files//2013/04/Report-serie-storiche_Occupati-e-disoccupati2.pdf, 2).
23. Between the 1970s and the 1980s we find: in Italy, a government of Christian Democrats followed by a government led by Socialist Bettino Craxi with Christian Democrats’ support (1983); in France, a major change from Giscard D'Estaing's presidency to the first Socialist president François Mitterrand (1981).
24. See the last chapter of Bock, Gisela, Women in European History (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002)Google Scholar. See Heidi Hartmann, The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union, in Women and Revolution, ed. Lydia Sargent (Boston: Black Rose Books, 1981).
25. Only recently a couple of exceptions emerged that adopted a gendered perspective with regard to these cases (but mainly focusing of the phase of fighting against factory closure). See Bracke, Maud Ann, “Labour, gender, and de-industrialisation: women workers at Fiat (Italy, 1970s–1980s),” Contemporary European History 28 (2019): 484–499CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Reid, Donald, Opening the gates. The Lip Affair, 1968-1981 (New York: Verso, 2018)Google Scholar.
26. See Bracke, Maud, “Building a ‘Counter-Community of Emotions’: Feminist Encounters and Socio-Cultural Difference in 1970s Turin,” Modern Italy 2 (2012): 223–236CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also her Women and the Reinvention of the Political: Feminism in Italy (1968-1983) (New York: Routledge, 2014).
27. The site of Mirafiori went from having 57,700 works in 1980 to 36,000 in 1988.
28. See Sangiovanni, Andrea, Tute blu, la parabola operaia nell'Italia repubblicana (Roma: Donzelli, 2006)Google Scholar.
29. See also the archive cataloguing made of this unionist's documents by Paola De Ferrari, Salva con nome, L'archivio di Alessandra Mecozzi. 1974-1999, Associazione Piera Zumaglino Archivio storico del movimento femminista – Torino (Torino, 2007).
30. See Edmond Maire, Lip 73 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1973). See various authors, LIP: how French workers are fighting the sack (Bristol: RSM, 1973).
31. See the collective booklet Lip au féminin (Paris: Syros, 1977).
32. LIP: a) CFDT archives in Paris: collection “Soutien de la CFDT lors du conflit de l'usine horlogère LIP à Besançon”; b) Archives Départementales du Doubs: 45J fonds Michel Jeanningros - Documentation sur le conflit à Lip Besançon; c) Archives Municipales de Besançon: collection LIP. FIAT: a) Archivio Fondazione Istituto Gramsci: collections CGIL and FIOM, particularly the collection “Coordinamento lavoratori Fiat in Cassa integrazione guadagni” now intergated in the archive Polo del 900; b) Archivio Ass. Zumaglino at the Casa delle Donne di Torino: collection Alessandra Mecozzi.
33. Demazière, The Boundaries of Unemployment (2019), here 224.
34. Luisa Passerini stated that: “It has taken place a long process of integration between oral history and gender history: […] they went together in broadening the territory of history and so renewing its objects and methods.” Passerini, “Il genere è ancora una categoria utile per la storia orale?” Quaderno di storia contemporanea 40 (2006): 12–14. [Translation is mine]
35. For a methodological reflection on the use of biographical accounts as primary sources, see the collection by Ana Caetano and Magda Nico, eds., Biographical Research. Challenges and Creativity (New York: Routledge, 2022). Concerning the choice of these sources about historically marginalized subjects, see, in particular, the chapter by Elsa Lechner, Migrants’ lives matter. Biographical research, recognition and social participation, 146–160. A text that effectively combines the discussion of oral sources and the relevance of individual biographies is Crane, Susan A., “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory,” in American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1372–1385CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36. See Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, and Manuela Martini, eds., What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business (Oxford: Berghahn, 2018).
37. See Hemmings, Clare, Why Stories Matter. The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.
38. See Castronovo, Valerio, FIAT, 1899-1999. Un secolo di storia italiana (Milano: Rizzoli, 1999)Google Scholar.
39. See Rosanvallon, Pierre, L’Âge de l'autogestion (Paris: Edition de Seuil, 1976)Google Scholar.
40. See De Ferrari, Salva con nome. See also Monique Piton, C'est possible ! Le récit de ce que j'ai éprouvé durant cette lutte de Lip (Paris: Éditions des Femmes, 1975). Piton, Monique, Mémoires libres (Paris: Syllepses, 2010)Google Scholar.
41. In one of the most famous ones, Piton—convinced that racial discrimination appears more evident than gender discrimination—uses the metaphor of white people/Arab people to speak of the men/women relationship in the framework of LIP's occupation. Two videos are available at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF): Carole Roussopoulos (directed by), LIP V – Christiane et Monique ; LIP VI – Jacqueline et Marcel (Paris: Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir [distrib.], copy, 1976).
42. Italian General Confederation of Labour.
43. Archivio dei Movimenti – Genoa, Collection Coordinamento Donne FLM e corsi 150 ore delle donne, box XI Produrre e Riprodurre. Convegno delle donne dei Paesi industrializzati sul tema: donne e lavoro (Torino, 23-24-25 aprile 1983).
44. See Giorda, Nicoletta, Fare la differenza: l'esperienza dell'Intercategoriale donne di Torino, 1975–1986 (Torino: Angolo Manzoni, 2007)Google Scholar.
45. See Bracke, Maud Ann, “Labour, gender, and de-industrialisation: women workers at Fiat (Italy, 1970s–1980s),” Contemporary European History 28 (2019): 484–499CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46. Archivio Gramsci Piemonte, Collection FIOM-CGIL, box 630, file 5, FIAT Relazioni Interne, Assunzioni di personale femminile - Area torinese, 27/02/78.
47. Alessandra Mecozzi, CGIL Turin, original interview, August 2, 2018.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid. And see Archivio dei Movimenti – Genoa, Collection Coordinamento Donne FLM e corsi 150 ore delle donne, box XI Produrre e Riprodurre. Convegno delle donne dei Paesi industrializzati sul tema: donne e lavoro (Torino, 23-24-25 aprile 1983).
51. For an iconic representation of this melting-pot of new issues that women introduced in the union framework, see the description given by Laura Fiori of the poster she realized for the conference Produrre e Riprodurre: “Vaguely inspired by the work of D. Hockney that I knew, it was based on three pictures of the same woman in three different settings and moments. It addressed the fragmentation, women's experience as divided among freedom, family links, work-emancipation.” The transcription of this interview can be found in Giorda, op. cit., 93 (original testimonies, integral version).
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Giovanna Cuminatto, CGIL Turin, original interview, April 16, 2014.
57. Evidence of this in the report from a workshop organized at the beginning of 1980 for the new female delegates and whose documents are collected in the booklet: Various authors, Il sindacato di Eva, Torino, Centro Stampa FLM, 1981.
58. Alessandra Mecozzi, CGIL Turin, original interview, August 2, 2018.
59. Reid, Donald, Opening the gates. Th Lip Affair, 1968–1981 (New York: Verso, 2018), 230Google Scholar.
60. See Frank Georgi, ed., Autogestion. La dernière utopie ? (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2003).
61. Monique Piton, (CFDT) Besançon, original interview, December 28, 2020.
62. See Zancarini-Fournel, Michelle, Le moment 68: une histoire contestée (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63. Manager with a left-wing approach. See his co-authored book: Guillaume Gourgues and Claude Neuschwander, Pourquoi ont-ils tué LIP ? De la victoire ouvrière au tournant néolibéral (Paris: Raisons d'Agir, 2018).
64. Note that the this paragraph owes much to a master thesis wrote a few years ago by Pauline Brangolo under the supervision of Prof. Frank Georgi: Les filles de Lip (1968–1981). Trajectoires de salariées, mobilisations féminines et conflits sociaux, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Master Histoire contemporaine des sociétés occidentales, Spécialité Histoire sociale, academic year 2014–2015.
65. The issues of the journal LIP Unité are available at the BnF, no. 1 (1973)–no. 19 (1975), 2e série, no. 1 (1976)–no. 26 (1981), 3e série, no. 1 (1982)–no.5/6 (1983).
66. Monique Piton, (CFDT) Besançon, original interview – December 28th 2020.
67. “Palente au tournant,” Libération, October 4, 1979, 1026W23, Archives Départementales du Doubs.
68. BnF: Carole Roussopoulos (directed by), LIP V – Christiane et Monique, Paris: Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, 1976.
69. See the tables realized by Brangolo at 191–192 of her master thesis. Among the workers designated for the C list (that of layoffs), 39 were OS and 18 were OP. Women were respectively 38 in the first group and 13 in the second. Among workers designated for re-hiring, 29 were OS and 36 were OP: women were 23 in the first group and only 11 in the second one.
70. The flyer is quoted in “Lip: une majorité se dessine pour entrer dans la voie des sacrifices,” L'Est républicain, October 4, 1979.
71. BnF: Thomas Faverjon (directed by), Fils de Lip, Paris, TS productions, 2007.
72. Ibid., interview with Jacques Burtz.
73. Brangolo, Les filles de Lip, 195.
74. Favrjon, Fils de LIP, interview with Fatima Demougeot.
75. French social security benefits for the unemployed were a contentious tool in the case of LIP workers: Messmer's government, for example, had used them to try forcing workers to cease their self-employment practices and register with the Agence Nationale de l'Emploi (Archives départementales du Doubs, 1026W10 Ministre de la Santé Publique to Direction de la Sécurité Sociale de Bourgogne, November 1, 1973). To get a sense of the overall situation of unemployment in France, I provide some information from the datasets of the INSEE: at the end of 1979, the women's unemployment rate was 7.7 percent while the men's rate was 3.8 percent. Back in 1975, these data were respectively 4.6 percent and 2.3 percent (https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/fichier/2532173/econ-gen-taux-cho-trim-2.xlsx).
76. Monique Piton, (CFDT) Besançon, original interview, December 28, 2020.
77. See High, Steven C. and Lewis, David W., Corporate Wasteland: the Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2007)Google Scholar.
78. Monique Piton, (CFDT) Besançon, original interview, December 28, 2020.
79. Ibid.
80. See Sangiovanni, Andrea, Tute blu, la parabola operaia nell'Italia repubblicana (Roma: Donzelli, 2006)Google Scholar.
81. Coordinamento Cassintegrati, L'altra faccia della FIAT. I protagonisti raccontano (Roma: ErreEmme, 1990).
82. An interesting reference can be made to the efforts realized in Italy to unionize homeworkers, mostly women: see my contribution “Lavoro domestico e femminismo sindacale: un incontro mancato? Alcune riflessioni,” in Separate in casa. Lavoratrici domestiche, femministe e sindacaliste: una mancata alleanza, ed. Beatrice Busi (Roma: Ediesse, 2020), 159–181.
83. See, for example, her choice of divorcing her husband, narrated in her biography in the chapter “1967, quitter le domicile…redémarrer,” in Mémoires libres (Paris: Syllepses, 2010), 49–56.
84. Monique Piton, (CFDT) Besançon, original interview, December 28, 2020.
85. For an interesting reflection on the weight of political boosting of individualism during phases of unemployment, see Jane Elliott and Jon Lawrence, “The Emotional Economy of Unemployment: A Re-Analysis of Testimony From a Sheppey Family, 1978-1983,” Sage Open, October 2016.
86. For more general discussions about the link between different household patterns, economic well-being, and public policies, see, for example, Folbre, Nancy, Women on Their Own: Global Patterns of Female Headship (New York: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar.
87. Monique Piton, (CFDT) Besançon, original interview, December 28, 2020.
88. Ibid.
89. See Weeks, Kathi, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.
90. Monique Piton, (CFDT) Besançon, original interview, December 28, 2020.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid.
94. See the exchange reported by another interviewee from Fiat, Giovanna Cuminatto, cited earlier in the article (endnote 56). This practice by Fiat is also denounced in a flyer collected in a booklet edited by the Intercategoriale. authors, Various, La spina all'occhiello (Torino: Musolini Editore, 1979), 107–108Google Scholar.
95. Ibid.