A textile worker, Lucie Baud (1870-1913) founded a union in her factory and played an important role in social movements aimed at defending workers' rights.
Labourers' Union
Little is known about Lucie Baud's childhood. Born in 1870 into a Catholic family, she received sufficient education to learn to read and became a worker at the age of 12. Married to a rural warden, she has two children.
In 1902, at the age of 32, she founded the "Syndicate of silk workers in the canton of Vizille of which she becomes secretary. This union seeks to stem the decline in wages due to the automation of the textile industry. Sent on a delegation to Reims, she was unable to obtain permission to speak.
When her husband dies, Lucie finds herself alone with her worker's salary to support her two children. The working conditions are difficult:the apprentices start working, like her, at the age of 12. The working days are a dozen hours.
Strike leader
In 1905, Lucie Baud launched herself further into trade unionism. To protest against the working conditions at the factory, she launched a strike that lasted 104 days, an unusual scale in a female industry. At first hostile, the merchants end up supporting the strikers by feeding them. Lucie takes the defense of the Italian workers, who do not participate in the movement and are very badly considered. She ends up representing the workers in a confrontation with her boss. Dismissed, she found a job at the Voiron factory.
In Voiron, in 1906, Lucie leads a new strike but, after a period of hope, the movement fails. Lucie then tries to kill herself by shooting herself three times in the jaw, but she survives. In 1908, she wrote a testimonial about her action that appeared in the review Le Mouvement Socialiste.
Lucie Baud died in 1913. The historian Michelle Perrot devoted a book to her, Mélancolie Ouvrière.