Introduction

The occupation is remembered among the French working classes as a grim period: pay and rations were reduced almost to starvation levels, work rates were increased, labour discipline was fierce, strikes were crushed and unions dissolved. Historians have tended to approach the study of labour relations during the occupation through the eyes of the workers and more particularly through the retrospective accounts of union militants. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the Vichy government has been seen as the revenge of the French patronat for the Popular Front. However, when examined through the eyes of the employers, the situation looks far less clear. As far as they were concerned the labour victory of 1936 had already been reversed before the establishment of the Vichy regime. The Majestic accords had marked the end of this process. Under Vichy three factors disposed the patronat to seek better relations with their workers. Firstly, the growing intervention of the state meant that workers and employers no longer confronted each other directly. Secondly, the labour famine that afflicted certain industries disposed employers to concessions. Thirdly, as the prospect of allied victory loomed on the horizon, employers were keen to avoid conflict with an organized working class that was associated with the Resistance. In this chapter it will be argued that the view of labour relations between 1940 and 1944 enshrined in previous historiography springs more from the myths of the liberation than from the realities of the occupation.