“A figure of the French left, he has always been alongside the [workers of] Lip and fought firmly for justice, without ever giving in to demagoguery”, commented the mayor of Montpellier on the town hall website. Claude Neuschwander resided in the city of Michaël Delafosse (PS), he died Monday August 28, at the age of 89, announced Mr. Delafosse.
Claude Neuschwander, formerly of Publicis, had become, at the very beginning of 1974, CEO of Lip, a century-old watchmaker which had filed for bankruptcy the previous year. In Besançon, the workers had taken control of their factory under the slogan “We manufacture, we sell, we get paid!” “.
Upon his arrival, this central worker opened negotiations with the unions and launched a recovery plan. The workers returned the stock of watches they had seized, with the aim of selling them. “He did what he could to get the company back on track. He had vision,” Roland Vittot, one of the union leaders of the time, testified to Agence France-Presse (AFP). “We have fond memories of his time with Lip.”
“I still dream that I feel the factory vibrate under my chair”
But the recovery plan is a failure, and Claude Neuschwander, who refuses to resort to layoffs, decides on reductions in hours, early retirement and requests a new capital increase.
At the beginning of 1976, the State granted a loan of 7 million francs. A new recovery plan is adopted, accompanied by a capital increase, but the Giscardian power chooses to dismiss this former member of the UNEF, the CFDT and the PSU.
“The government and the big bosses [could] not bear the insolent success of these watchmaking workers”, he commented for AFP in 2007, during the screening of a documentary in Besançon on this social conflict, one of the longest of the Fifth Republic. “Thirty years later, I still dream that I feel the factory vibrate under my chair,” he said.
This former journalist took over the general management of Fnac in 1980 and then created Ten, a consulting firm for local authorities, particularly active in the renovation of neighborhoods.
