A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - IDEAS AND STRUGGLES: Work, and more work (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Dockworkers in struggle in Dunkirk ---- "Revenge for the vanquished!" 
---- A meeting between former dockworkers from the Dunkirk docks, now 
united around a social and solidarity economy project, and a young 
journalist with no experience in either business creation or working 
conditions and struggles in ports. Antoine Tricot is not from this 
world; he knows it and writes about it, but he searches, he gets 
involved like Albert Londres and Janet Malcom, he delves into memories 
and stories. The result is a warm, human book about the lives of these 
men who want to work, to work some more, these Dockworkers in struggle 
in Dunkirk, a book published by Créaphis. Since 1947, dockworkers had 
enjoyed a special status: that of independent, intermittent workers, 
free to choose and organize their work as they saw fit. The strength of 
the union, the CGT Ports and Docks Federation, protected them from the 
companies. In 1992, a law abolished this status. This led to a two-year 
strike and a rift within the dockworkers' collective. Some accepted 
being paid monthly, while others intended to maintain their previous 
status and create a power dynamic to assert their existence.

Antoine Tricot has made it his mission to "try to help those who didn't 
experience it understand this workers' adventure at the crossroads of 
centuries." The photos accompanying the testimonies show the docks now 
devoid of activity, empty buildings, somewhat like the Renault site on 
Île Seguin in Billancourt, for examplea poignant moment for those in the 
working class who once knew these places bustling with activity. But 
first, we must delve into the history. The dockworkers' labor is evoked 
throughout the testimonies: accidents, "crazy work rates," but also the 
pride in the world of work so often mentioned in this type of book, 
which I regularly refer to in this column (see, in particular, "Des 
idées et des luttes"[Ideas and Struggles], November 19, 2023, Samuel 
Guicheteau, Manuella Noyer, Christophe Patillon, Dockers - une histoire 
nantaise, travailler et lutte sur les quais (XVIe-XXe siècle)[Dockers - 
A Nantes History, Working and Struggling on the Docks (16th-20th 
Centuries)], Ed. du Centre d'histoire du travail, 2023).

"It comes from the grassroots."

As the pages turn, the class struggle becomes a lived reality, a logic 
of "us" versus "them," with class contempt as its driving force. Three 
thousand dockworkers are mobilized at the port, their rallying point the 
CGT union hall, L'Avenir newspaper, a communist culture tinged with 
anarcho-syndicalism. "It comes from the bottom up." The strike is harsh, 
marked by clashes, divided families, suffering, and union members 
imprisoned and then acquitted by the courts. The employers' objective: 
to oust the leaders by hiding behind supposed realities: the evolution 
of work, tools, methods, and international trade. These realities are 
objective, but no fundamental dialogue is ever initiated. Then one day, 
these union members find themselves out on the street, without work. 
Should they create a movement of the unemployed? Like in the 19th 
century, singled out and rejected, these dockworkers mobilize. "Staying 
together, creating our own jobs, and identifying the needs that 
capitalism doesn't meet."

Builders of a Solidarity Economy

So they created an association, Together for the Future, then a company, 
BES (Wood Environment Services), to assert their dignity through work. 
Equality, the principle of one person, one vote, the collective governed 
by solidarity. This is BES's entry into the social and solidarity 
economy. Working on innovation and ecology. They know ecology, but in 
the context of working conditions that slowly kill. The chapter on 
asbestos is evocative, a long battle against employers manipulating 
procedures until the victims are worn down. "It's the adversaries' 
strategies again. They tire us out, they drive us crazy, they wear us 
down. And then they wait for us to die."
They invent projects, their company evolves because it mustn't 
disappear. The daughter of one of them works there. Let's hear what she 
has to say: "To think that the company was created by these former 
dockworkers whom no one else wanted to hire... So yeah, revenge for the 
vanquished!" For them, work is certainly a form of exploitation, but 
"also an emancipation." Let's allow Antoine Tricot to conclude: "Let's 
learn from this small group that didn't relinquish its collective power 
and refused to abandon a know-how that allowed it to bend something much 
bigger than itself. A profession like a promise, the promise of being 
part of something, of being someone, of living with one's head held high 
in dignity."

* Antoine Tricot
Working, working again,
Dockworkers in struggle in Dunkirk
Ed. Créaphis, 2025

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