My name is Loman-Pierre Charrier and I am a doctoral student in contemporary history. After a research master’s degree and obtaining the contemporary worlds master’s degree at UCA, I began a doctoral thesis on the workers of the Sept-Fons factory. My research, which continues the work started in the research master’s degree, seeks to show how these workers experience work in their daily lives. I also seek to understand why there have been no social movements since the end of the 1950s in this factory, while the territory is oriented rather to the left of the political spectrum.
Project statement:
History of a worker “immobilization”: the example of the Sept-Fons foundry, a factory in a rural area. (1921 – to the 2000s)
My thesis focuses on the analysis, over time (1921-to the present), of the factors that led the workers of Sept-Fons (a factory in Allier, a French department) to become immobilized. This term, which I propose to the scientific community, describes the reasons for an absence of social mobilization. While the workers of the factory largely adhered to the CGT and were mobilized until 1955 (date of the last mass social mobilization), they became immobilized in the face of the risks of job cuts and the closure of the factory. However, this absence of mobilization for national or local struggles does not mean that they stopped practicing forms of insubordination. Workers’ resistance has in fact focused more on individualized acts of resistance. In fact, my work is part of the work on the history of everyday life (alltagsgeschichte) initiated by Alf Lüdkte. Through fieldwork combining oral history and participant observation, I was able to observe and collect the stories of these acts of resistance on a micro scale, which contribute to a broader immobilization of the working group. Since the factory belonged to multinationals (Chrysler, Simca, Peugeot, PSA and now Stellantis), my research therefore also has a transnational dimension.
