The Bourse du Travail (French for "labour exchanges"), a French form of the labour council, were working class organizations that encouraged mutual aid, education, and self-organization amongst their members in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Role

Labour

Early Third Republic France was a time of dramatic social and economic change. With the tremendous growth of industrial capitalism in the last twenty years of the 19th century and the continued migration of workers to cities, the traditional system of meeting places for those seeking work was overtaxed. Skilled and unskilled trades alike had gradually developed systems to match those seeking work with employers, but the legalisation of trades unions in 1884, helped formalise these structures. Employers, too, were creating private labour placement offices. The Republican government of Gambetta relied upon the support of working class voters, and so helped create the first Bourses du Travail under the control of newly legalised labour unions. Socialists and radicals, elected to city offices in some areas, made the funding of Bourses du Travail a priority. As the system expanded, radicals in local government extended aid. The ''loi du 14 mars 1904'' mandated that every city of over ten thousand inhabitants had to create a ''bureau de placement'', establishing job offices and undercutting employer run placement agencies. These government offices were usually placed in the local Bourses du Travail. With government support came government regulation. While there was no legal obligation for the state or the municipality to put in place these buildings, their construction helped both the

workers' movement The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other. * The trade union movement ...

and surveillance of its activities. Business interests and the police saw the formalisation of Bourses du Travail as a way to channel the labour movement away from revolutionary change or to keep an eye on those who promoted it.

Role in revolutionary ideology

The ideology behind the explosion in Bourses du Travail, popularized by revolutionary syndicalists like

Fernand Pelloutier Fernand-Léonce-Émile Pelloutier (1 October 1867, in Paris – 13 March 1901, in Sèvres) was a French anarchist and syndicalist. He was the leader of the '' Bourses du Travail'', a major French trade union, from 1895 until his death in 1901. He ...

, intended to create in them the key organizational component of radical economic transformation. By acting as future co-ordinating bodies, facilitating communication between ''syndicates'' (unions), the Bourse du Travail would co-ordinate production and consumption in the absence of both the state and the private ownership of the means of production. These institutions were central to the notion of

Revolutionary Syndicalism Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of prod ...

which dominated the

Confédération Générale du Travail The General Confederation of Labour (french: Confédération Générale du Travail, CGT) is a national trade union center, founded in 1895 in the city of Limoges. It is the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions. It is ...

, France's largest labor federation in the first twenty years on the 20th century. Pelloutier and other revolutionary syndicalists argued that the Bourses—small scale, local, self made—were the guarantee that the CGT would remain both directly democratic and revolutionary. They saw labor organizations as interconnecting in three ways: a national federation uniting each specific union (traditional craft or trade unions); a national federation of ''all'' unions (in this case, the CGT); and all local workers, across union and political boundaries, united in the Bourse du travail. Supporters of the Bourse movement believed this structure last should become the most important form of workers' association.

Cultural

The other major change of this period was the Republican promulgation of Laic laws, taking education out of the hands of the Catholic church, and eventually taxing and regulating Church institutions. Bourses du Travail, like civil marriage or lay funerals, filled a communal role once played by local parishes. Bourses du Travail were centres of working class culture. Almost every one contained lending libraries, classrooms, meeting halls, and theatres. Family and community celebrations took place here (away from the church), as did classes and political discussions, formal meetings and light entertainment. The Bourses du Travail buildings are still often the locations of theatres and concert venues.

History

Birth in the Third Republic

The idea of French labour exchanges far predates the institution. In 1790, at the height of the French Revolution, an abortive Bourse du Travail was established in Paris. The

loi Le Chapelier The ''Le Chapelier Law'' (french: Loi Le Chapelier) was a piece of legislation passed by the National Assembly during the first phase of the French Revolution (14 June 1791), banning guilds as the early version of trade unions, as well as ' (by o ...

of 1791 outlawed this and any other labour organisation, and despite the brief legalisation during the Second Republic, unions remained illegal until 1884. Adolphe Leullier presented in 1845 a similar project which he called the ''Bureau central des ouvriers''. The idea of creating a Labour Exchange (''Bourse du travail'') is credited to the economist

Gustave de Molinari Gustave de Molinari (; 3 March 1819 – 28 January 1912) was a Belgian political economist and French Liberal School theorist associated with French ''laissez-faire'' economists such as Frédéric Bastiat and Hippolyte Castille. Biography Bo ...

in 1845. In February 1851

François Joseph Ducoux François Joseph Ducoux (11 September 1808 – 23 March 1873) was a French physician, left-wing politician and businessman. He served as a military physician from 1828 to 1838 before settling in Blois and engaging in local politics. He was a repre ...

submitted a bill to the Legislative Assembly that proposed to establish a state-run Labour Exchange in Paris. His project was also submitted to the Paris Municipal Commission. The project was abandoned, but later revived in 1875 and 1883 and eventually came into force in 1886. In 1875, workers petitioned the Paris municipal council to establish a Bourse du Travail, which was rejected. Labour organisations had existed underground or by other names, but their new status led to an explosion of radical activity. The French Revolutionary tradition was evolving into the economic sphere of union organising, rather than the seizure of power (exemplified by

Auguste Blanqui Louis Auguste Blanqui (; 8 February 1805 – 1 January 1881) was a French socialist and political activist, notable for his revolutionary theory of Blanquism. Biography Early life, political activity and first imprisonment (1805–1848) Bl ...

). The first Bourse du Travail, in Paris, was begun in 1887. A building on

rue JJ Rousseau ''Ruta graveolens'', commonly known as rue, common rue or herb-of-grace, is a species of ''Ruta'' grown as an ornamental plant and herb. It is native to the Balkan Peninsula. It is grown throughout the world in gardens, especially for its bluis ...

was donated by the Socialist municipal council, and a second on

rue du Château d’eau ''Ruta graveolens'', commonly known as rue, common rue or herb-of-grace, is a species of ''Ruta'' grown as an ornamental plant and herb. It is native to the Balkan Peninsula. It is grown throughout the world in gardens, especially for its bl ...

was created in 1892. By this time there were 14 Bourses du Travail established around France, by 1902 83, with a further 75 created by 1914.

''Fédération des Bourses de travail'' and the CGT

Anarcho-syndicalism Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence i ...

'' The ''Fédération des Bourses de travail'' (Federation of Labour Exchanges) was created in 1892 at the Congress of Saint-Etienne by

to federate each city's workers' organisations. It was first led by

Bernard Resset Bernard (''Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic masculine given name. It is also a surname. The name is attested from at least the 9th century. West Germanic ''Bernhard'' is composed from the two elements ''bern'' "bear" and ''hard'' "brav ...

(1892), then Rieu Cordier, then Fernand Pelloutier (1895) and from 1901 to 1918 by

Georges Yvetot Georges Louis François Yvetot (20 July 1868 – 11 May 1942) was a French typographer, anarcho-syndicalist and anti-militarist. He was secretary general of the '' Fédération des Bourses de travail'' (Federation of Workers' Councils) and deputy ...

. The Federation of Labour Exchanges merged in 1895 with the Fédération nationale des syndicats (National Federation of Trade-Unions), which had been created in 1886, giving rise to the

Confédération générale du travail The General Confederation of Labour (french: Confédération Générale du Travail, CGT) is a national trade union center, founded in 1895 in the city of Limoges. It is the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions. It is ...

(CGT), which was dominated by a revolutionary syndicalist strategy until 1921. The Federation merged with the CGT in 1902. Many of the leaders of the Bourse du Travail went on to lead the CGT, and the FBT was a co-equal partner with individual unions in the CGTs founding. Bourses have thus been called the ''mère des syndicat'' (the mother of unions) for their role. Structurally, individual Bourses comprised the ''building'' itself (and its social, education, and other practical resources), and the Bourse as a council of local unions. Unions paid a fee to join the bourse, though CGT affiliated unions were often exempted, and sent representatives to regular meetings of all the local unions. The administration of the bourse was by elected representatives. Contrary to Pelloutier's vision, these representatives came from a variety of ideological backgrounds which both represented the local political leanings of unions, but also the wider political left in the area. In many towns there were socialist municipal councils and mayors, either in

Jules Guesde Jules Bazile, known as Jules Guesde (; 11 November 1845 – 28 July 1922) was a French socialist journalist and politician. Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter ...

's French Workers' Party, the Jauresin possibilists of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), or independent reformers of the Briand group. This leaves aside the constellation of syndicalist focused socialists (like

Jean Allemane Jean Allemane (25 August 1843, Sauveterre-de-Comminges, Haute-Garonne – 6 June 1935, Herblay in Seine-et-Oise) was a French socialist politician, veteran of the Paris Commune of 1871, pioneer of syndicalism, leader of the Socialist-Revolutio ...

's Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party), cooperativists, and individualist anarchist workers who sometimes played active roles in their local Bourse. In most places

anarcho-syndicalism Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence i ...

was but one small faction in both the bourses ''and'' the CGT, and so the bourses took on roles of a

reformist Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement. Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can eve ...

, or Marxist, or strictly trade unionist character which presaged the CGT split.

Rise of the PCF and decline of the Bourse

The birth of the

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Uni ...

began the decline of the Bourse du Travail movement. The CGT, which had regrouped the individual organisations, was swept up in the ideological tumult of the post war years. It became, like much of the French left, dominated by the Communists ideological vision, which saw the loose federalism of Revolutionary Syndicalism as a reason for the failure of the 1918-1919 strike wave. In 1921, the CGT revised its structure, eliminating the local Bourses du Travail as constituent organisation of the Union, and replacing them with a network of ''Unions Locales''. From here on, the CGT followed a British and American model of local trade specific unions, federated into a single national structure. A split, eventually into three federations, created a French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO)-dominated CGT, the

United General Confederation of Labour United may refer to: Places * United, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community * United, West Virginia, an unincorporated community Arts and entertainment Films * ''United'' (2003 film), a Norwegian film * ''United'' (2011 film), a BBC Two fi ...

(Confédération générale du travail - unitaire or CGTU), where communists cohabited with anarchists and revolutionary trade unionists, and the Revolutionary Trade Unionist General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail - syndicaliste révolutionnaire or CGTSR) in 1923 when the communists gained control of the CGTU. (The CGT and CGTU reunited in 1936, and remained close to the

.) Predictably, these often bitter party divisions in the labor movement made the local and inclusive vision of the Bourses impossible. The Bourses du Travail survived, often as a single organisation union hall, while the history of splits in the French labour movement saw the buildings pass from one hand to another, revert to municipalities, or disappear entirely.

Today

Buildings and communities

Bourse du Travail buildings and institutions remain in most large French cities. Many are headquarters of the local unions which are federated into the

Confédération nationale du travail The CNT-F (Confédération nationale du travail) or National Confederation of Labour is a French anarcho-syndicalist union. It was founded in 1946 by Spanish anarcho-syndicalists in exile, and former members of Confédération Générale du Tr ...

, or of other unions which split from the

. Many bourses were central as places of organizing and resistance during

May 1968 The following events occurred in May 1968: May 1, 1968 (Wednesday) * CARIFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade Association, was formally created as an agreement between Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago. *RAF Strike C ...

. In some places municipal governments have retained ownership, or community and radical groups have taken them over. Some have simply been sold off for office space or torn down. In Lille, one of the earliest bourses remains as the home of five unions and a radical community center, and came center stage in the resistance to the deportation of

undocumented immigrants Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country or the continued residence without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upwar ...

, when 460 ''sans-papiers'' staged a 30-day hunger strike to oppose government policies.

Ideology

The Bourse du Travail concept has been central to

Anarcho-syndicalists Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in ...

across the globe, and the model greatly influenced

Council communism Council communism is a current of communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated workers' councils and council democracy. Strong in Germany ...

and other forms of

left communism Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they reg ...

. Anarchists of many stripes point to the Bourse du Travail as an example of a directly democratic, small scale federalist institutional structure.

Outside France

The Bourse du Travail idea was exported along with French imperialism. The FBT's full name was actually ''Fédération des Bourses du Travail de France et des Colonies'', though in practice this meant there were sections in the French settler dominated parts of

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. These declined with their French counterparts, and did not survive the anticolonial struggle. In Subsaharan Africa, Bourses du Travail were implanted in two ways. In French controlled regions, labor unions were organized by the CGT in the 1930s and 1940s. Their labour halls were styled Bourses du travail, some of which remain as centers of union activity. The rulers of Belgian Congo created a Bourse du travail at Katanga in 1910 as a state controlled hiring hall, in an attempt to lure labor to areas of planned industrial (mostly mining) concentration. Attempts by local officials to recast this cynically created employment agency into a more worker run operation suggest that the idea of a Bourse du travail never lost its syndicalist connotations.

"When Buttgenbach, managing director of the UMHK, proposed the creation of the BTK to the colonial minister Renkin, the minister promptly called an assembly of the major employers in Katanga, resulting in the creation, as a private enterprise, of the Bourse in July 1910. However, the administration's views on the functioning of the institution were inconsistent with the view of the BTK as a monopolistic, state-run and coercive labour bureau."

Aldwin Roes. The Bourse du Travail du Katanga: 'A parastatal recruitment organisation with monopsonistic powers?' State-capital relations in the mobilization of Katanga's labour power, 1910-1914. London School of Economics, (2007)

Bibliography

Historical Works

* Daniel Colson. Bourse du Travail et syndicalisme d'entreprise avant 1914: les Acieries de Saint-Etienne in

Le Mouvement social ''Le Mouvement social'' is a French-language quarterly journal of social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth ...

, No. 159 (Apr. - Jun., 1992), pp. 57–83. *

Paul Delesalle Paul Delesalle (29 July 1870 – 8 April 1948) was a French anarchist and syndicalist who was prominent in the trade union movement. He started work as a machinist, became a journalist, and later became a bookseller, publisher and writer. Early y ...

. Les Bourses du Travail et la C.G.T., Bibliothèque du mouvement prolétarien, 64 pages, Rivière, 1912. * Robert Gildea. Review Article: La Vie quotidienne des anarchistes en France, 1880-1910 by Andre Nataf; Naissance des Bourses du travail. Un appareil ideologique d'Etat a la fin du XIXe siecle by Peter Schottler; Souvenirs d'un anarchiste by Maurice Joyeux; in The English Historical Review, Vol. 103, No. 409 (Oct., 1988), pp. 1000–1001. * Patrick H. Hutton (ed.). Historical Dictionary of the Third French Republic, 1870-1940. University of Michigan (1986) p. 122 * Jean-Yves Martin. Aux origines de la Bourse du Travail de St-Nazaire de 1892 à la fin du siècle, in Cahier de l’AREMORS n°3 (1992) * Fernand Pelloutier. Histoire des bourses du travail, (1901). * Maurice Poperen. Creation des Bourses du Travail en Anjou 1892-1894 in

, No. 40 (Jul. - Sep., 1962), pp. 39–55. * Jean Sagnes. Le mouvement ouvrier en Languedoc: Syndicalistes et socialistes de l'Herault de la foundation des bourses du travail a la naissance du Parti communiste (Midi et son histoire). Privat(1980) * Peter Schöttler. Naissance des Bourses du travail. Un appareil idéologique d'Etat à la fin du XIXe siècle. Presses universitaires de France (1985). * Michael Seidman. The Birth of the Weekend and the Revolts against Work: The Workers of the Paris Region during the Popular Front (1936–38) in French Historical Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 249–276. * Danielle Tartakowsky. Review article: Bourses du travail et federations d'industrie. Trois etudes in

, No. 178, France-Belgique Fin de Siecle (Jan. - Mar., 1997), pp. 150–151.

Online Resources

* Fernand Pelloutier's ''Histoire des Bourses du travail'', the complete text,
online at pelloutier.net (accessed 28-06-2007)
Also a
on anarkhia.org
an

*
Pierre Besnard. Bourse du Travail Encyclopédie anarchiste. 13 April 2005.
* à la Bourse du Travail Fr:Wikipedia on Anarchist Bourse du Travail in the 1930s * des bourses du travail Fr:Wikipedia list of Bourse du Travail *
Loi relative à la création des syndicats professionnels du 21 mars 1884
*
Association Bourse du Travail Mémoire Vivante, Troyes

*
''FERNAND PELLOUTIER et les Bourses du Travail'': Documentary Film
*
Timeline and history of the Bourse dutravail of Saint-Etienne

In Francophone Africa

* Albert Ayache. Essai sur la vie syndicale en Algerie, l'annee du Centenaire (1930) in

, No. 78, Special Issue: Le Mouvement Ouvrier Francais et l'Afrique du Nord. (Jan. - Mar., 1972), pp. 95–114
Aldwin Roes. The Bourse du Travail du Katanga: ?A parastatal recruitment organisation with monopsonistic powers?? State-capital relations in the mobilization of Katanga?s labour power, 1910-1914. London School of Economics, (2007)
*

Some operating Bourses du Travail

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of th ...

Bourse du travail
3 ème Arr. Métro B-Station Place Guichard.

Paris (château d'Eau)
Bourse du Travail
3 rue du château d'Eau - Métro République.

Angers Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is the prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Anjou until the French Revolution. The inhabitants of both the city and the prov ...

Bourse du Travail
14, place Louis Imbach
49000 Angers

Creil Creil is a commune in the Oise department in northern France. The Creil station is an important railway junction. History Archaeological remains in the area include a Neolithic site as well as a late Iron Age necropolis, perhaps belonging to ...

Bourse du travail
rue Fernand Pelloutier
60100 Creil

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture ...

Bourse du Travail
44, cours Aristide Briand
33000 Bordeaux
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bourse Du Travail French Third Republic Syndicalism Anarchist movements History of socialism Left communism Trade unions in France Popular education