LIP (company)

LIP is a French watch and clock company whose turmoil became emblematic of the conflicts between workers and management in France.

The LIP factory, based in Besançon in eastern France, began to experience financial problems in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and management decided to attempt a factory shut down. However, after strikes and a highly publicized factory occupation in 1973, LIP became worker-managed. All the fired employees were rehired by March 1974, but the firm was liquidated again in the spring of 1976. This led to a new struggle, called "the social conflict of the 1970s" by the daily newspaper Libération.

Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT) union leader Charles Piaget led the strike. The Unified Socialist Party (PSU), which included former Radical Pierre Mendès-France, was then in favor of autogestion (workers' self-management).

In 1807, the Jewish community of Besançon offered a mechanical watch (montre à gousset) to Napoleon. Sixty years later, Emmanuel Lipman and his sons founded a clockwork workshop under the name of Comptoir Lipmann. In 1893 it became the Société Anonyme d'Horlogerie Lipmann Frères (Lipmann Brothers Clock Factory).

The firm launched the Lip stopwatch in 1896. Thereafter Lip became the brand name of the company. They built approximately 2,500 pieces a year. The company launched the first electronic watch in 1952, called "Electronic" (it was not electric because of the presence of a diode). The first models were worn by Charles de Gaulle and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower; in 1948, a T18 was offered to Winston Churchill.

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