French general strike of 1936
strike in 1936
The French general strike of 1936 aimed to establish workers' rights, which began on 11 May 1936 in the Bréguet factory and led to the creation of unions. The strike began to end with the Parisian metal unions returning to work on 12 June 1936.
The strike resulted in the improvement of workers' rights in France, such as the 40-hour week and the legal acceptance of unions, stopping employers from discriminating against those in unions.
Background
During the 1920s and early 1930s, people were not willing to associate themselves as trade union activists due to dismissal being the common recourse. Herrick Chapman estimates that although in general aircraft factories had between 150 and 1,500 workers, there were rarely more than "a half dozen men in the early thirties who devoted themselves to the clandestine life of communist cell meetings, tract writing, and the virtually futile effort to recruit comrades". Between 1927 and 1933, there were 10 aircraft workers' strikes, of which 8 failed.
In 1931, the great depression hit France. The great depression caused factories to close and sharpened the societal conflict in France. The effects of this depression began to be felt in 1934, when there were violent right-wing protests which some authors such as Michael Torigian believe "threatened the existence of the French Republic".
Adolf Hitler's rearmament caused the French government to launch Plan I in 1934, which was a major procurement program based on equipping the air force.
The public source identifies “French general strike of 1936” as strike in 1936. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around French, general and strike.
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This entry incorporates text from “French general strike of 1936” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.