Biography:Léon Jouhaux
Léon Jouhaux | |
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Born | Pantin, France |
Died | 28 April 1954 Paris, France | (aged 74)
Resting place | Père Lachaise Cemetery |
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Léon Jouhaux (1 July 1879 – 28 April 1954) was a French trade union leader who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951.[1]
Biography
Jouhaux was born in Pantin, Seine-Saint-Denis, France. Jouhaux's father worked in a match factory in Aubervilliers. His secondary schooling ended when his father's earnings were stopped by a strike. He gained employment at the factory at age sixteen and immediately became an important part of the union. In 1900, after serving a brief mandatory military sentence in French Algeria, Jouhaux joined a strike against the use of the white phosphorus that blinded his father, was dismissed, and worked at a succession of jobs until union influence saw him reinstated.
In 1906, he was elected by the local union as a representative to the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), where his abilities saw him quickly rise through the ranks of organized labour. By 1909 he became interim treasurer, and shortly afterwards became secretary-general of the organization, which he held until 1947. His goals as a trade unionist were the familiar ones of the early labour movement — the eight-hour day, the right to union representation and collective bargaining, and paid holidays. During the Popular Front, the 1936 Matignon Agreement, to which he was a signatory, awarded many of these rights to French workers.
In the years before World War II, Jouhaux organised several mass protests, and the organization he led protested against the war. However, once the war started, Jouhaux supported his country and believed that a Nazi Germany victory would lead to the destruction of democracy in Europe. During the war, he was arrested and imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp, later moved to the Castle Itter before being freed by American and German troops in the 1945 battle there.
After the war, Jouhaux split from the CGT to form the social-democrat Workers' Force (CGT-FO). In 1951, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize.[1]
In an international context, his work was instrumental in the setting up of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and was elected to high positions in international trade union bodies, including the International Federation of Trade Unions and its postwar kin the World Federation of Trade Unions until that body split.
On his passing in 1954, Léon Jouhaux was interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Legacy
- The rue Léon Jouhaux in Aix-en-Provence, Grenoble, Lyon, Genas, Villefranche-sur-Saône and Paris are named for him.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
Quotation
"I would not go so far as to say that the French trade unions attached greater importance to the struggle for peace than the others did; but they certainly seemed to take it more to heart." Léon Jouhaux[8]
References
External links
- Miss nobel-id as parameter including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1951 Fifty Years of Trade-Union Activity in Behalf of Peace
{{Navbox | name = Nobel Peace Prize laureates | state = autocollapse | bodyclass = hlist | title = Laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize | nowrapitems = yes
| group1 = 1901–1925 | list1 =
- 1901: [[Biography:Henry DunHenry Dunant / Frédéric Passy
- 1902: Élie Ducommun / Charles Gobat
- 1903: Randal Cremer
- 1904: Institut de Droit International
- 1905: Bertha von Suttner
- 1906: Theodore Roosevelt
- 1907: Ernesto Moneta / Louis Renault
- 1908: Klas Arnoldson / Fredrik Bajer
- 1909: A. M. F. Beernaert / Paul Estournelles de Constant
- 1910: International Peace Bureau
- 1911: Tobias Asser / Alfred Fried
- 1912: Elihu Root
- 1913: Henri La Fontaine
- 1914
- 1915
- 1916
- 1917: International Committee of the Red Cross
- 1918
- 1919: Woodrow Wilson
- 1920: Léon Bourgeois
- 1921: Hjalmar Branting / Christian Lange
- 1922: Fridtjof Nansen
- 1923
- 1924
- 1925: Austen Chamberlain / Charles Dawes
| group2 = 1926–1950 | list2 =
- 1926: Aristide Briand / Gustav Stresemann
- 1927: Ferdinand Buisson / Ludwig Quidde
- 1928
- 1929: Frank B. Kellogg
- 1930: Nathan Söderblom
- 1931: Jane Addams / Nicholas Butler
- 1932
- 1933: Norman Angell
- 1934: Arthur Henderson
- 1935: Carl von Ossietzky
- 1936: Carlos Saavedra Lamas
- 1937: Robert Cecil
- 1938: Nansen International Office for Refugees
- 1939
- 1940
- 1941
- 1942
- 1943
- 1944: International Committee of the Red Cross
- 1945: Cordell Hull
- 1946: Emily Balch / John Mott
- 1947: Friends Service Council / American Friends Service Committee
- 1948
- 1949: John Boyd Orr
- 1950: Ralph Bunche
| group3 = 1951–1975 | list3 =
- 1951: Léon Jouhaux
- 1952: Albert Schweitzer
- 1953: George Marshall
- 1954: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
- 1955
- 1956
- 1957: Lester B. Pearson
- 1958: Georges Pire
- 1959: Philip Noel-Baker
- 1960: Albert Lutuli
- 1961: Dag Hammarskjöld
- 1962: Linus Pauling
- 1963: International Committee of the Red Cross / League of Red Cross Societies
- 1964: Martin Luther King Jr.
- 1965: UNICEF
- 1966
- 1967
- 1968: René Cassin
- 1969: International Labour Organization
- 1970: Norman Borlaug
- 1971: Willy Brandt
- 1972
- 1973: Lê Đức Thọ (declined award) / Henry Kissinger
- 1974: Seán MacBride / Eisaku Satō
- 1975: Andrei Sakharov
| group4 = 1976–2000 | list4 =
- 1976: Betty Williams / Mairead Corrigan
- 1977: Amnesty International
- 1978: [[Biography:Anwar SaAnwar Sadat{{\}}Menachem Begin
- 1979: Mother Teresa
- 1980: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
- 1981: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
- 1982: Alva Myrdal / Alfonso García Robles
- 1983: Lech Wałęsa
- 1984: Desmond Tutu
- 1985: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
- 1986: Elie Wiesel
- 1987: Óscar Arias
- 1988: UN Peacekeeping Forces
- 1989: Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama)
- 1990: Mikhail Gorbachev
- 1991: Aung San Suu Kyi
- 1992: Rigoberta Menchú
- 1993: Nelson Mandela / F. W. de Klerk
- 1994: Shimon Peres / Yitzhak Rabin / Yasser Arafat
- 1995: Pugwash Conferences / Joseph Rotblat
- 1996: Carlos Belo / José Ramos-Horta
- 1997: International Campaign to Ban Landmines / Jody Williams
- 1998: John Hume / David Trimble
- 1999: Médecins Sans Frontières
- 2000: Kim Dae-jung
| group5 = 2001–present | list5 =
- 2001: United Nations / Kofi Annan
- 2002: Jimmy Carter
- 2003: Shirin Ebadi
- 2004: Wangari Maathai
- 2005: International Atomic Energy Agency / Mohamed ElBaradei
- 2006: Grameen Bank / Muhammad Yunus
- 2007: Al Gore / Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- 2008: Martti Ahtisaari
- 2009: Barack Obama
- 2010: Liu Xiaobo
- 2011: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf / Leymah Gbowee / Tawakkol Karman
- 2012: European Union
- 2013: Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
- 2014: Kailash Satyarthi / Malala Yousafzai
- 2015: Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet
- 2016: Juan Manuel Santos
- 2017: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
- 2018: Denis Mukwege / Nadia Murad
- 2019: Abiy Ahmed
}}
Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon Jouhaux.
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