'On fabrique, on vend, on se paie' — Lip's workers ran the watch factory themselves

A decision hidden from the people it costs is a decision they will answer. Lip's '480 à dégager' produced not quiet dismissals but a self-run factory and a march of 100,000; secrecy converted a restructuring into a legend.

Lip descends from the Comptoir Lipmann, founded in Besançon in 1867 by Emmanuel Lipmann; in 1931 it became Lip S.A. d'Horlogerie. By the 1950s it was the most powerful watch manufacture in France — 1,500 employees, 300,000 watches a year. The Musée du Temps sums the standing: the 8th watchmaker in the world and the 1st in France — 10 million French people owned a Lip.

On 17 April 1973 the managing director resigned and the company filed for bankruptcy. In June the workers found the secret plan — 480 à dégager, 480 to shed. On the night of 12–13 June they hid a stock of 25,000 watches. On 18 June the general assembly voted to restart the line; the idea, historian Donald Reid shows, came via a Paris journalist and the dominican Jean Raguénès, and was moved formally by CGT secretary Claude Mercet. The banner read: C'est possible : on fabrique, on vend, on se paie.

On 14 August 1973 the CRS, on the interior minister's order, evicted the occupation; on 29 September some 100,000 people marched at Besançon. The accords of January 1974 restarted the factory under new management against the return of 15,000 to 20,000 watches. The successor company failed again: bankruptcy in April 1976, a second occupation on 5 May, and on 12 September 1977 the final liquidation. In November the workers voted the cooperative Les Industries de Palente.

The slogan outlived the factory. It titles a chapter of Reid's scholarly history; Christian Rouaud's 2007 documentary Les Lip, l'imagination au pouvoir called the strike the most emblematic workers' struggle after May 68; for the 50th anniversary the Musée du Temps mounted LIP.ologie — un conflit social sans équivalent en France. And the name ticks again in Besançon: the SMB revival sold 1.2 million Lip-logo watches in 2007 — though as Charles Piaget warned, les Lip d'aujourd'hui ne seront plus jamais les Lip d'avant 76.

They hid 25,000 watches, restarted the line, and paid themselves, turning the factory into a self-run cooperative that became a legend.

The company planned the cuts in secret; the workers answered by restarting production themselves — the banner was the business plan.

Every rescue was political, not commercial: the accords traded watches for jobs, and the successor company failed within two years.

The eviction made the slogan immortal: the CRS of 14 August and the 100,000-strong march of September turned a bankruptcy into a legend.

When management's plan is secret, the workers' plan becomes the story. Lip's 'on fabrique, on vend, on se paie' was written on a banner in June 1973 and still titles books and exhibitions fifty years