The Proletarianizing of the Fonctionnaires. Civil Service Workers and the Labor Movement under the Third Republic.

Judith Wishnia's The Proletarianizing of the Fonctionnaires. Civil Service Workers and the Labor Movement under the Third Republic (Baton Rouge/London: Louisiana State U.P., 1990; pp. x + 394. Pb. [pounds]16.10) is a useful survey of an intriguing subject. It was one of the supreme ironies of French labour history that during the Depression of the early 1930s, over a third of the membership of the Confederation Generale du Travail consisted of syndicats of state employees, whose existence and affiliation to the CGT was in direct contravention of the law -- for it was only in 1946 that state employees were granted the right to join unions and to strike. Before that, they lived in …