The Second Empire: Paternalism and Progress

Napoleon III's Second Empire (1852-1870) marked a crucial transition in French work culture. The emperor, influenced by both authoritarian and socialist ideas, promoted a form of paternalistic capitalism that acknowledged worker needs while maintaining social order. The 1864 law legalizing strikes (though not unions) represented a crucial recognition of workers' collective rights.

This period saw the emergence of paternalistic employers who provided extensive benefits to ensure worker loyalty and productivity. The Schneider family in Le Creusot built an entire town around their steel works, complete with housing, schools, hospitals, and churches. While critics denounced such arrangements as "industrial feudalism," they established expectations that employers bore responsibility for workers' welfare beyond mere wages.

The Paris Commune of 1871, though brief and brutally suppressed, offered a glimpse of alternative work arrangements. Communard workshops experimented with worker self-management, equal pay for women, and the abolition of night work in bakeries. These experiments, though short-lived, entered French collective memory as proof that different forms of work organization were possible.