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  The FH: More than a century of history  
   
While the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH officially saw the light of day on 19 November 1982 – and began its activities on the following 1st January - its history goes back more than a century and results from the merger between the Swiss Chamber of Watchmaking, whose origins date back to 1876, and the Swiss Watchmaking Federation founded in 1924. This grouping met the need to provide the industry with the greatest possible unity of action and improved synergies that already existed in part between the different activities of the two associations
 
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1982 		  It was in fact early in 1876 that the deputies of the Federal Chambers of the cantons of Geneva , Vaud, Neuchâtel and Bern took steps "towards uniting and therefore effectively representing" the main industries of French-speaking Switzerland and the Jura mountains. On 14 May 1876, these initiatives culminated in the creation of the Société intercantonale des industries du Jura. During the first quarter of a century of its existence, with rare exceptions, the latter was concerned solely with defending the interests of the watch industry and related sectors. It was therefore natural that it should become, in 1900, the Swiss Chamber of Watchmaking and ancillary industries (jewellery, gold- and silversmiths’ trade, musical boxes).

It is worth mentioning that this association was made up not of firms, but of cantonal chambers of trade and industry and regional trade associations. This special feature led to the formation of the Fédération Suisse des associations de fabricants d’horlogerie (FH), on 17 January 1924, by the delegates of nine watch manufacturing employers’ sections (Le Locle, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Fleurier, Bern, Biel, Tramelan, Porrentruy, Geneva and German-speaking Switzerland ).

The aim at the time was to create an organisation which, at a national level, united all watch manufacturers, since all that had existed hitherto – as in other sectors of the industry moreover – was a regionalised structure. These activities took place during the crisis years of the 1920s (overproduction, stagnation and unemployment), the ill-effects of which were at their worst. At the time, falling prices were a major preoccupation. There was an urgent need to introduce a minimum price system among watch manufacturers, and to sign agreements with suppliers of watch components and producers of movement-blanks. The former created their own organisation, the Union suisse des branches annexes de l'horlogerie (UBAH), in 1927; the latter Ebauches SA, in 1926.

At the beginning of 1928, a system of client-supplier discussions was put in place, resulting in the first collective agreements between these three central players. They ensured mutual observance of prices and prohibited "chablonnage", i.e. the export of watch components (save to France , Germany , Poland and Japan ).

In 1931, Ebauches SA joined forces with several producers of spare parts (assortments, balances, balance-springs) to form the ASUAG, a grouping that came into being with the support of the Confederation, banks, the Swiss Chamber of Watchmaking, the UBAH and the FH. To consolidate the conventional system and limit "trafficking" by dissidents, the associations asked the Confederation to intervene. In 1934, Bern published a "federal order for the protection of the Swiss watch industry" which introduced a production permit and an export permit for watch components, movement-blanks and supplies. This system was extended over the years, not without some amendments, before gradually falling into disuse and finally being totally abandoned at the beginning of the 1970s.

At the end of the Second World War, while remaining the normative instrument of client-supplier relations, the FH diversified its activity. To encourage the recovery of Swiss watchmaking on a global scale, it organised, from the second half of the 1940s and throughout the 20 years that followed, collective promotional activities for Swiss watches on all five continents. These were financed by the collection of a tax of 50 centimes on each movement-blank purchased by “établisseurs” (manufacturers who buy in all components) or sold as a finished watch by manufactories.

At the same time, in 1948 the Swiss Chamber of Watchmaking adopted new articles of association, which effectively removed the links that had tied it until then to watchmaking cantons and made it a purely private institution. The cantonal chambers of commerce therefore disappeared and were replaced by federations and associations of producers (FH, ASUAG, UBAH, etc).

From the end of the 1960s, to make up for the loss of collective promotional campaigns, the FH focused its attention on new economic, commercial, legal and even technical activities, both in Switzerland and abroad. It also played an increasingly important role in relations between the industry and Swiss and foreign authorities. Its field of action therefore started to overlap with that of the Swiss Chamber of Watchmaking. Hence the inevitable merger of 1982, which gave rise to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH, with its headquarters in Biel.


The Presidents    
             
Swiss Chamber of Watchmaking      
Auguste Pettavel   1900 - 1908        
Fritz Huguenin   1909 - 1917        
Paul Mosimann   1918 - 1923        
Edouard Tissot   1923 - 1935        
Albert Rais   1935 - 1942        
Max Petitpierre   1943 - 1945   Swiss Watchmaking Federation
Edgar Primault   1945 - 1966   Henri Richard   1924 - 1933
Blaise Clerc   1967 - 1977   Maurice Vaucher   1933 - 1957
Pierre Renggli   1978 - 1980   Gérard Bauer   1958 - 1977
Georges-Adrien Matthey   1980 - 1982   Georges-Adrien Matthey   1978 - 1982
             
Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH
André Margot   1983 - 1993        
François Habersaat   1993 - 2002        
Jean-Daniel Pasche   since 2002        


 

The Presidents since 1990
       
   

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Last update : March 23, 2005