From cantine to congress: Algerians’ demands and labour unions in the Alès coalfield under the Popular Front

This article unpacks the complex process by which the specific demands of Algerian workers of the Alès coalfield were integrated by labour unionists under the Popular Front. At the beginning of 1937, an autonomous Algerian movement, l’Union fraternelle des musulmans du Gard (UFMG), emerged from the cantines where these colonised workers socialised. It articulated non-workplace demands related to housing and access to family allocations. The response of local mining unionists was complex. They never adopted the racial and colonial analysis proposed by the UFMG and tended to invisibilise the movement. Nevertheless, nationally and regionally significant events that occurred in the coalfield – a national congress of the mining union and the threat of a strike – saw concrete support develop for the oppressed population. This was ultimately expressed in the incorporation by labour unionists of the UFMG’s demands in a collective convention.