Matignon Agreements (1936)
The Matignon Agreements were signed on 7 June 1936, between the Confédération générale de la production française employers' organization, the CGT trade union and the French state. They were signed during a massively followed general strike initiated after the election of the Popular Front in May 1936, which had led to the creation of a left-wing government headed by Léon Blum. Sometimes referred to by legal scholars as the "Magna Carta of French Labor", these agreements were signed at the Hôtel Matignon, official residence of the head of the government, hence their name.
May–June general strike and agreements
The negotiations, in which participated Benoît Frachon for the CGT, Marx Dormoy as under-secretary of state to the President of the Council, Jean-Baptiste Lebas, had started on 6 June at 3 PM, but the pressure from the workers' movement was such that the employers' confederation quickly accepted the unions' terms. A general strike had been initiated in Le Havre on 26 May, accompanied by factory occupations to prevent lock outs, and had quickly spread to all of France. More than a million workers were on strike. The social movement immediately followed the electoral victory of the Popular Front, in order to reach this position of force. Interior Minister Roger Salengro publicly announced the following day the success of the negotiations.Without having to organize strike in each factory in order to gain some advantages for them, all of the workers benefited with these agreements of:
- the legal right to strike
- the removal of all obstacles to union organization
- paid vacations
- 40-hour work week paid 48.
- collective bargaining
- the repeal of the 1935 decree-laws concerning the wages of public servants and the taxes on World War I veterans' pensions.
Work was resumed at the Renault factories on 13 and 15 June and in the steelworking industry.