How a French Watch-Factory Occupation Kept Alive the Spirit of May ’68
Fifty years ago, the LIP watch factory in Besançon, France, announced mass layoffs. In response, the staff occupied the plant — launching one of the most famous attempts at worker self-management in French history.
A group of LIP workers in 1974. (Courtesy of Monique Piton)
The effects of May 1968 were still echoing across France in April 1973, when a renowned watchmaker filed for bankruptcy, drawing up plans for massive layoffs. The LIP factory in Besançon, close to the Swiss border, would become the site of one of the most famous and hardest-fought workers’ struggles in modern French history.
Starting on June 18, 1973, around one thousand workers, including six hundred women, occupied their factory to protest against its closure, seizing the leftover stock of watches, assembling others, and selling them, with the slogan, “C’est possible, on fabrique, on vend, on se paie” (It’s possible, we produce, we sell, we pay ourselves).
May ’68, which saw as many as ten million workers go on strike, was a moment in which traditional hierarchies were being challenged wherever in society they were found. In parts of the labor movement, this was articulated around calls for autogestion — workers’ self-management — in contrast to the Taylorist management regime and lack of dialogue with employees that characterized factories up and down the country.
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