ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the impact of municipal trade unions on the transformation of local government in French cities during the twentieth century. This situation is the one experienced in Toulouse, a town in the southwest of France. In most Western countries, the first decades of the twentieth century represented a pivotal period in the modernization of municipal government. New methods of management and various forms of civil service systems were progressively adopted in local government bureaucracies. As with other categories of workers in the early twentieth century, French municipal employees joined collective organizations to defend their sectional interests and coordinate common aims. After the Liberation, the onset of political pluralism within the town council put an end to the exclusive private dialogue between the dominant trade union and the socialist party, which had ruled the municipality since 1925. As a result of their collective organization, municipal employees became important participants in local policy.
