Wages and the Politics of Life in Postwar France

Abstract

In mid-May 1950, the Subcommission on the Non-Dietary Part of the BudgetType held a particularly fractious sitting. Mr. Andre Baupaume of the CFTC union (Confederation francaise des travailleurs chretiens) submitted that the standard “minimum dwelling” in France should include a sink with running water and a drain. “A long discussion opened,” the meeting records report. “The CGT [Confederation generale du travail], CGT-FO [CGT–Force ouvriere] and the CFTC consider that a source of running water inside the dwelling is indispensable”—part of a worker’s minimum vital.1 Representatives from all the country’s major unions, despite wrenching conflicts in the political sphere, coalesced in unity around the water tap. Not the employers. “The CNPF [Conseil national du patronat francais] and the CGA [Confederation generale de l’agriculture] think that currently, the question of running water inside the dwelling can be considered only desirable. The majority of dwellings do not contain running water; a sink, in general, is located one to a floor.”2 Indeed, only 18 percent of rural homes boasted of running water in the early 1940s.3 Statistics gathered in the Seine region by tax authorities in 1939 and 1940 suggest that the ratio of apartments with bathrooms to those without was at least one to ten.4 How could one