An abandoned coal mine near Alès. Photo Credit: Gilles Chiroleu
– By Scott Sayare –
PARIS — They waited more than half a century for the law to change and cover their claims. And last week, a court outside Paris announced that it will rule in September on the case of 17 coal-miners, fired for their participation in labor strikes — in 1948 and 1952. The defendants, most well into old age, some deceased and represented by their survivors, are seeking 60,000 euros each in lost pay.
“My wife can’t talk about it, she goes into a cold rage,” Norbert Gilmez, 87, told Libération. “Our entire life was ruined by it.”
For two months in autumn 1948, the miners of Nord-Pas-de-Calais launched a massive strike, protesting a wave of proposed lay-offs. More than 400,000 took part, according to the French Communist party, for whom the miners’ movement represents “one of the most heroic pages in the history of the country’s proletariat.” The government, gripped by Cold War fears of insurrection in the fragile, rebuilding nation, sent army troops and riot police to quell the uprising.
In the end, six coal-miners were killed, many thrown in jail, and 3,000 fired. A similar incident saw more laid-off in 1952.
“There were dead and wounded. It was a veritable state of siege,” said Gilmez, who has deemed the French government response “state terrorism.”
The court’s announcement of a pending decision comes at an opportune time for the miners: the financial crisis has spurred unprecedented support for labor movements in France. A traditional cultural divide between the blue- and white-collar classes here has widened into a yawning chasm.
French workers have held managers hostage, sacked their employers’ offices and taken their companies to court over the thousands of lay-offs announced in recent months; some of the most persistent protesters — employees of a Continental tire factory scheduled for closure, for example, who are now known across the country as “les Conti” — have grown into folk-heroes of sorts.
Despite the propitious social climate, 60 years is a long time to wait.
“What’s really regrettable is that the judges couldn’t find an earlier date,” one of the miners’ lawyers told Libération in December. “Many of the miners who fought to obtain reparations are already dead.”
Their one-time employer, the now defunct Charbonnages de France, initially defended its actions, claiming it had the right, at the time, to fire the miners for their participation in the movement — though the cherished French right to strike was already inscribed in the country’s constitution.
A lawyer for the miners responded: “Our adversaries aren’t defending themselves on the heart of the matter, they’re just saying, ‘It’s too late now!’ They’re playing the clock in a cynical manner. When they agreed to a settlement, they knew they were going to be liquidated. And they also know the plaintiffs are old.”
The miners are but a handful to have made it this far. A final ruling is two-and-a-half months away.
