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[Frank Sayre <dnedre@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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>From: "Workers World News Service" <workers-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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>Date: Thu, 7 Dec 95 1:42:01 EDT
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>From: JANET@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: "Workers World News Service" <workers-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Strikes Rock French Gov't
>Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 00:46:38 EDT
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>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Dec. 14, 1995
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>WORKERS, STUDENTS BATTLE BUDGET CUTS
>Strikes Rock French Gov't
>
>By Shelley Ettinger
>
>There are signs that a labor upturn is on the way in the
>United States. Still, many workers must be impatient; some
>may be disheartened and discouraged after 15 years of
>relentless attacks against the working class.
>
>For them, inspiration has arrived--sent by their sisters
>and brothers an ocean away, who are showing it is possible
>for workers of many nationalities to join together and take
>concerted mass action against the ruling class that would
>enslave and impoverish them.
>
>As of Dec. 6, the entire country of France is immobilized
>by a spreading national strike wave.
>
>Workers are demonstrating what a Reuter report called
>"grass-roots militancy beyond their wildest expectations."
>
>The workers of France have risen up to take the offensive
>in class combat against the bourgeoisie. With their action,
>they provide a magnificent lesson for the world's working
>class and oppressed peoples:
>
>Faced with deep political reaction, an aggressive ruling
>class hell-bent on forcing ever more hardship on the working
>class, intensifying racism and neo-fascist attempts to
>scapegoat immigrant workers--faced with all this, labor can
>fight back.
>
>And not only that--labor can fight back on such a scale
>that it shakes the whole system of oppression and
>exploitation.
>
>Thirteen days into the walkout, the French bourgeoisie is
>in a panic. All the European ruling class is "trembling,"
>according to Reuter.
>
>Bosses in the United States, who have been on such an
>anti-worker spree for so long, must also be very concerned.
>If this can happen in France, after all, it could happen
>here too.
>
>EERIE QUIET, BURNING RAILWAY TIES
>
>The walkout, now spiraling in the direction of a possible
>general strike, started with government transportation
>workers. They shut down the French transit system--buses,
>railways, subways, and some airplanes.
>
>They didn't just stay home, either. Workers surged onto
>the runways at Orly Airport outside Paris. They burned
>railway ties in the southern city of Marseille.
>
>Electricians tried to rush the National Assembly. Workers
>blockaded highway toll booths.
>
>The famous broad avenues of Paris hosted massive traffic
>jams as commuters who usually take the trains drove their
>cars into the city.
>
>Postal and telecommunications workers soon joined the
>transport workers on strike. Then the shutdown spread--to
>school teachers, hospital workers, staffers at the tax and
>treasury offices and museums, employees of the government
>electric utility, social-service workers, fire fighters,
>taxi drivers, insurance workers.
>
>Hundreds of thousands marched in huge strike
>demonstrations in cities throughout the country on Dec. 5.
>
>In some places they engaged in hand-to-hand combat with
>police, who attacked the workers with tear gas. Windows at
>some stores and train stations were smashed. Everywhere,
>they sang "The Internationale," the communist anthem.
>
>On the eve of the protests, leaders of two of the three
>biggest national union federations had called on workers in
>the private sector to join the strike action.
>
>And they did. Marseille dock workers shut down the port in
>that key Mediterranean shipping center. Workers at
>corporations like Rhone-Poulenc and Perrier left the plants
>and staged protests.
>
>Employees of military contractors joined the strike. Auto
>workers at state-owned Renault disrupted production starting
>Nov. 30. Employees of privately owned car companies were
>rumored to be close to walking out.
>
>Union members at the Pechiney aluminum plant in Dunkirk
>had planned to shut down the giant smelter on Dec. 5. Bank
>employees are set to strike Dec. 7 and 8. Doctors and
>journalists are also going to walk.
>
>Even places not directly hit by the strike are affected,
>especially by the transport shutdown. The agribusiness,
>steel and chemical industries are all virtually paralyzed.
>Owners of the Printemps department-store chain complained
>that holiday sales had already dropped at least 60 percent.
>
>The army even had to cancel scheduled joint military
>exercises with Germany. There was no way to transport
>equipment across the border.
>
>Meanwhile, students are also on the march. A student
>strike demanding more funding for education has shut
>colleges and universities across France.
>
>Hundreds of thousands of students took part in protests
>Nov. 30. Over the Dec. 2-3 weekend their leaders rejected
>the government's offer to slightly increase funding. And
>students joined in the Dec. 5 strike marches.
>
>BOSSES WERE SET ON COLLISION COURSE
>
>What drove the masses to action? They'd been pushed to the
>wall by a ruling-class assault on their rights and benefits.
>
>In recent years, workers in France and throughout Europe,
>like those in the United States and around the world, have
>faced a broad assault from the ruling class. The drive to
>beef up profits by restructuring capitalist industry has
>resulted in shutdowns, layoffs, and attacks on social
>services and labor rights.
>
>Powerful union movements had won these services and
>rights, along with relatively good wages and benefits, in
>the years after World War II. In the Soviet Union and the
>socialist countries of Eastern Europe, workers had taken
>power. This created tremendous pressure on the ruling
>classes in various Western European countries to make
>concessions to labor, and in France in particular there was
>a strong Communist Party that played a leading role in the
>unions.
>
>At that point, European capital could afford to make some
>concessions, based on the hefty profits it was reaping from
>imperialist enterprise in the Third World. Today, however,
>the imperialist bourgeoisies are locked in an increasingly
>vicious and ever more desperate competition for world
>markets and they're driven to seek out every avenue for more
>profits.
>
>Inevitably, the imperialists move toward exploiting
>workers ever more deeply, at home as well as in the
>oppressed countries.
>
>This trend came to a head in France when Prime Minister
>Alain Juppe unveiled a shocking "austerity" plan. Among
>other things, it would freeze government workers' pay, slash
>social-welfare benefits including social security for
>retired workers, raise taxes, gut government health
>services, and raise public employees' retirement age by two
>years.
>
>France's workers were already suffering. Unemployment is
>at 11.5 percent.
>
>According to a report in the Nov. 30 Wall Street Journal,
>19.9 percent of France's youths are unemployed. Among the
>super-oppressed youths in communities of immigrants from
>North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the jobless rate is
>even higher.
>
>Yet the French economy is officially in a "recovery." In
>reality, France--like the rest of Europe--is mired in a
>long-term economic crisis that compels the ruling class to
>push harsher and harsher measures to take more and more back
>from the workers.
>
>At the same time, the bourgeoisie has been emboldened by
>the collapse of the Soviet Union and setbacks for socialism
>around the world. The French ruling class has taken the
>opportunity to try to foster a rise in racist violence and
>racist ideology targeting people of color.
>
>Neo-fascist and ultra-right groupings like the National
>Front, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, seek to turn white workers
>against Third World workers as a means to undermine labor
>unity against the real culprits behind deteriorating
>conditions for the working class--the bosses.
>
>With all this, the bourgeoisie has been on a collision
>course with the working class, which led to the mass
>outpouring of worker anger that is convulsing France.
>
>UNIONS UNITE TO FIGHT
>
>The French strike is stunning for its display of unity.
>
>Two union federations--the General Confederation of
>Workers (CGT), in which members of the Communist Party play
>a leading role, and Workers' Force--have joined hands.
>Workers of every nationality are striking and marching
>together, confounding all the racists' attempts to divide
>them.
>
>Popular sentiment is with the workers. Ten days into the
>struggle, a poll showed that 62 percent of the population
>strongly supports the strike. Seventy-two percent said they
>have no confidence in the government.
>
>The Juppe government may not survive. The prime minister
>faces increasingly loud demands that he step down and call
>parliamentary elections.
>
>Juppe announced he would hire 1,100 private buses to move
>people around Paris starting Dec. 4. Whether he'd be able to
>get anyone to drive the vehicles was another question. Some
>officials have also raised the option of mobilizing the army
>to transport goods.
>
>
>
>On Dec. 2, the minister of industry pleaded with workers
>to end the strike. He warned of "catastrophic" consequences
>otherwise.
>
>He also threatened workers by raising the specter of mass
>layoffs if the walkout continues. In fact Peugeot, unable to
>ship out new cars, has already laid off 7,000 workers from
>its plant in the northeastern city of Mulhouse. Europe's
>biggest flour maker, Soufflet, has halted production at five
>of its eight mills.
>
>Some bourgeois commentators are worriedly comparing the
>events in France to the worker-student uprising of 1968,
>which for a time seemed to verge on a revolutionary
>development. This time around, though, the working class has
>been forced into motion by conditions that keep spiraling
>downward.
>
>The workers feel they are defending their lives. If
>anything, this may make for a more bitter confrontation with
>the exploiting class.
>
>The struggle shows no signs of abating. It's heating up.
>Union leaders said they wouldn't even meet with the
>government until Juppe withdraws his austerity plan
>altogether.
>
>Instead, they said they will continue broadening the
>strike.
>
>Marc Blondel of Workers' Force said, "It's true this is a
>hardening of the position ... This is a radicalization.
>
>"I am now going to demand all sectors to progressively
>join the strike, with one single goal: the withdrawal of the
>Juppe plan."
>
>CGT head Louis Viannet said Dec. 5 was "a new and powerful
>day of action" that would be a "springboard" to even more.
>
>Viannet said, "Now is the time, because today we are
>strong."
>
>                         - END -
>
>(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint
>granted if source is cited. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>ww@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx For subscription info send message to:
>ww-info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
>

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