Claude Neuschwander, the former head marked to the left of the watchmaker Lip and then of Fnac, has died at the age of 89, the mayor of Montpellier, the city where he lived, announced on Wednesday. “Personal of the French left, he was always on the side of the Lips and fought firmly for justice, never giving in to demagoguery,” Michel Delafosse (PS) commented on the website of the city council. The former leader passed away on Monday.
Claude Neuschwander, a former member of Publicis, had become CEO of Lip in early 1974, a century-old watchmaker that had filed for bankruptcy the previous year. In Besançon, the workers had taken control of their factory under the slogan “We make, we sell, we get paid!” Upon arrival, this center opened negotiations with the unions and launched a recovery plan. The workers return the stock of watches that they had seized in order to sell them.
Founder of a consulting company for local authorities
But the recovery plan is a failure and Claude Neuschwander, who refuses to resort to layoffs, decides to cut working hours, retire early and request a new capital increase. At the beginning of 1976, the State granted a loan of 7 million francs. A new recovery plan is adopted, accompanied by a capital increase, but the Giscardian power chooses to dismiss this former member of Unef, the CFDT and the PSU. “The government and the big bosses could not stand the insolent success of these watchmakers,” he commented in 2007, during the screening of a documentary in Besançon on this social conflict, one of the longest in the Fifth Republic.
This former journalist took over the general management of Fnac in 1980 and later created Ten, a consultancy company for local authorities, especially active in the renewal of neighborhoods.
Source: BFM TV
