National Workshops (1848)
국립 작업장 (1848)
Part of French Second Republic
The public works scheme opened by the Provisional Government on 27 February 1848 to give work to the unemployed of Paris and closed on 21 June. Registrations grew from 6,000 on 15 March to 117,000 at the end of April, but there was too little work and most received an allowance of 1.5 to 2 francs a day for idleness. Its closure, decided by the conservative Assembly, provoked the June Days.
In depth
When armed workers demanded "the organisation of labour" and "the right to work" from the Provisional Government on 25 February, it decreed that it would "guarantee the existence of the workmen by work" and entrusted the decree to the minister of public works, Marie. Unlike the self-managed "social workshops" of Louis Blanc's Organisation of Labour, the National Workshops were modelled on the charity workshops of the old regime. Directed by the engineer Émile Thomas, they were organised on military lines from squads of eleven up to companies of 901, and more than 20,000 women also worked in them. The men worked about one day in four, paving streets, replanting trees and digging and refilling trenches. They cost about one percent of the government budget, yet the Count of Falloux denounced them as "an organised strike at 170,000 francs a day". After 15 May the conservatives went on the offensive, and the decree of 21 June ordered men aged 18 to 25 to enlist and the rest to leave for the provinces. Marx wrote that the government, meaning to build a reserve army against the workers, had instead created an army for insurrection.