Word: billancourt
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When Renault's (automobiles, tanks, airplane engines, shells) 34,000 workers, comprising France's biggest single company, caught retiring bourgeois President Louis Renault inside his Billancourt office, they locked him in. Though the owners were cheerfully remarking that they had never been so well protected against fire, theft and sabotage, Louis Renault had no stomach for his workers' company, shortly gave in to their demands...
...Billancourt, just outside Paris, the rows of shops of the Societe Anonyme des Usines Renault had been shut down for nine days. Baggy trousered watchmen, caped gendarmes paraded warily 'about the works. At street corners and at the cafes of the workers' quarter morose workers in felt derbies, flattened peaked caps or black sailor straws, harangued one another. They wanted an immediate raise of 20% in wages. The company was willing to advance only 10%. Impasse. Many a worker regretted the quietude of last May Day, on which in past years workers had demonstrated their discontents...
...workers glanced at their letters and quickly secluded themselves in their closely shut parlors for conference with wives or husbands. That evening of propaganda was a queer one in Billancourt. Workers greeted one another with restraint, peeked slyly aside at one another. Next day the Renault factories resumed production, having granted only the 10% wage increase...