Léon Jouhaux, Louis Saillant and the national and international in transnational trade unionism

Abstract

The history of transnational trade unionism has been analysed in terms of mutual assistance, regulating global capital, augmenting the legitimacy, prestige and power of unions and their leaders, and providing avenues for states to prosecute national interests. From the 1920s to the 1980s, international organisations of trade unionists constituted a site of struggle between the antagonistic philosophies of transnationalism and trade unionism of Communists, social democrats and liberals, the USSR and the capitalist democracies. This paper traces how two conflicting transnationalisms shaped primarily by national factors developed in French unions and were reflected in international bodies during the first half of the twentieth century. Through exploration of the life histories of two leaders of French labor, Léon Jouhaux and Louis Saillant, it examines changing and clashing conceptions of trade unionism and transnationalism. The paper depicts the fluidity of allegiances and the role human agency driven by national considerations played in the cooperation and conflict between Communists and their opponents which culminated in the split in the Confédération Générale du Travail in 1947 and the disintegration of the World Federation of Trade Unions in 1949.