Tireless activist, pillar of the struggle of Lip workers, Charles Piaget died in Besançon

The charismatic leader of the Lip conflict, Charles Piaget, died this Saturday, November 4, 2023 at the age of 95. The activist left the same year when the 50th anniversary of the workers’ conflict at the Lip watch factory in Besançon was celebrated in the Comtoise capital.

If there is a man in Besançon who embodies the fight of the LIP, it is Charles Piaget. Le Bisontin was one of the leaders of the LIP conflict, an emblematic social struggle of the 1970s. Le Bisontin died a little more than two months after Claude Neuschwander, Lip’s emblematic boss after the 1973 conflict.

“We make, we sell, we get paid” : the LIP slogan has gone around the world. An extraordinary conflict inseparable from the career of Charles Piaget. A clearly spoken and charismatic trade unionist.

The man recognized his role as leader but always preferred to highlight the collective, for him, this is the real strength of this struggle refusing the layoffs announced for the LIP watch manufacturer. This is what Charles Piaget declared to our colleagues in September 2020:

In fact, we need to put all of this into perspective. I must have had some qualities to achieve this pivotal role, but a fight is eminently collective.

This sense of collectiveness is at the heart of Charles Piaget’s commitment.

After living the LIP adventure to the end, Bisontin retired in 1983 and withdrew from public life for ten years before re-engaging. This time, it was alongside the unemployed with the AC collective!

In each fight, Charles Piaget relies on his three pillars: refusal of fate, collective strength and denunciation of competition, which he calls “a recipe for disaster”.

Charles Piaget was also a lively mind, a brilliant intellectual mechanic. A look back at the life of a lucid, honest and combative Bisontin.

Charles Piaget was born in Besançon in 1928. His father was of Swiss origin. Fritz Piaget came to settle in the Comtoise capital and worked for himself as a watchmaker. “ A “repairer” capable of repairing everything in a watch” tells journalist Joël Mamet in his biography of Charles Piaget, published in 2020. In this book, a whole unknown part of the life of the leader of LIP is revealed. We discover that Charles Piaget never knew his mother, that he does not even have a photo of her.

Fritz Piaget’s wife left home some time after the birth of little Charles. He spent the first years of his life with the Ubbiali, a Besançon family who adopted him after the death of Fritz Piaget. Charles was 15 when he lost his father.

Ten years later, Charles married Annie Billot. At that time he was already working at LIP. After training at the Besançon Watchmaking School, he was hired as a toolmaker in the famous factory the year he turned 18.

A little over 20 years later, he became head of blank manufacturing. “I liked it, there were lots of problems to solve” we can in Joël Mamet’s book. Charles Piaget even confided to the former journalist from the Est Républicain that he dreamed of his work, but not necessarily of his union struggles.

With his wife Annie, he is active in Catholic Worker Action. One of the foundations of this movement is to “Placing people at the heart of society”. An approach that Charles Piaget will keep permanently anchored in him.

This particularly formative movement is in some ways the beginnings of his subsequent commitment to the CFDT and the PSU, the Unified Socialist Party, embodying the “Second Left” from 1960.

In 1968, France was on strike and dreamed of a society freed from its societal constraints. Charles Piaget is the main organizer of the 68 strike at Lip. A sort of dress rehearsal before the great conflict of 73.

For nine months, the women and men of this watch factory that we already nickname the “Lips” invent original actions every day to keep their social struggle alive. An extremely innovative conflict that will go around the world.

We said no, no way. Building on our momentum of everything we had acquired over years and years of collective action and democracy, we said that we were refusing fate. We don’t accept, we want something else.

A struggle which embodies self-management and based on the participation of all. With this landmark slogan: “Here we make, we sell, we get paid” Everything became possible. The employees took charge of their destiny by restarting the factory.

We were liable to prison, we were liable to not finding a job, etc. So individually, it was unmanageable. The collective was able to manage in the assemblies, we exposed the fear, the fears and we tried to reason around this fear and show that there were possibilities of overcoming it.

In the 1970s, as we have seen, these ideas were supported by the PSU, the Unified Socialist Party now embodied by Michel Rocard. Charles Piaget will be a candidate in the 1978 legislative elections for the self-management front.

Le Bisontin could have been a candidate for the 1974 presidential election but Michel Rocard ultimately sided with Mitterrand in the first round.

The rest of the story is less often told. In 1976, Charles Piaget once again led the fight to try to save the company which was filing for bankruptcy. A long, trying conflict, which led to the compulsory liquidation of the company in 1977. The company’s 880 employees lost their jobs.

We did not succeed, but not Lip, it was the French left, the trade union organizations which failed to find the response which was necessary at the time of the oil shock, of the abandonment of Keynesian economics towards something else.

The Lips will continue their struggle by creating cooperatives.

Charles Piaget will work for one of them: Les Industries de Palente, specialized in precision mechanics. Cleverly, the three letters take up that of the legendary watchmaking brand: LIP He will be technical manager until 1983.

Retirement at Point du jour

Charles Piaget goes into early retirement. Exhausted, he retired from public life and took advantage of his house on Chemin du Point du jour. A mason’s house, built on his way home from work with the help of his adoptive father.

The six children he had with Annie grew up in this house. His wife died in 1982 of cancer. Joël Mamet questioned the union leader at length about his family life. Charles Piaget admits not having been able to find a balance between his commitments and his family.

I felt a lot of guilt. Towards Annie and the children. I spent too much time in the business. During the conflict, of course. And also before, in my work and my responsibilities at the tooling. I realized, but a little late, how much I had loved my wife, and how much I missed her. She invested so much in our children. My feelings for her never wavered.

In 1993, Charles Piaget came out of his silence for concrete action. He participated in the creation of the Bisontine AC association! Acting together against Unemployment, an organization which brings together unemployed and active people to fight against unemployment. A new commitment that he will keep for twenty years.

Throughout his life, Charles Piaget did not change his beliefs one iota. The retiree will continue to participate in debates and follow with interest initiatives against global warming. He is “became truly green”observes Joël Mamet.

We do not have a choice. In the economic war, the weak link is the employees. Everyone is catching up on the employees. So, it is up to the weak link to organize themselves, to ensure that they are able to resist and call for solidarity.

A consistency that commands the respect of his adversaries as well as his admirers. In the spring of 2023, demonstrators against pension reform noticed the discreet presence of Charles Piaget in their ranks. Discreet and still determined to fight what he considered unjust.