Turkish workers fight French state racist law

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SP leader Mitterand visits the hunger strikers Demonstrators support of hunger strike struggle • A 24-day strike by Turkish and Kurdish workers in Paris has focussed widespread attention on the plight of illegal immigrants in France.

The seventeen • hunger strikers-'travailleurs sans papiers' (literally 'workers without papers')-were protesting not only for the right to have work permits but also about the conditions of super-exploitation in the garment and tailoring industry which employs a high proportion: of Paris's 8,000 Turkish community.

High fashion

The reality behind Parisian 'high fashion' and typical of the conditions which exist in the multitude of overcrowded, oneroom sweatshops, are a working day of 15 hours and payment of 10 francs for articles which will be sold at 500 francs.

A background of declining markots and falling profits within the industry combine to intensify the employers' offensive.

The larger capitalists look for ways to force out of business those competitors which under cut their operations.

As they turn to the government to step-up its already routine harrassment of immigrants, this has led internationally to fresh attacks on workers INTER COMN NATIONAL ITTEE SUMME in these smaller production units.

Though in East London's textile industry raids and deportations are becoming increasingly common, in Paris things are on a much bigger scale.

Within a sizeable immigrant population, the French state's latest racist moves have been through the notorious Bonnet Laws passed in the middle of last year and named after the Man Bernet. the Interior Chris They are a familiar package for the intimidationy of immigrants with particular emphasis on denying the right to political activity and giving sweeping powers for expulsion on 'security' grounds.

The system is policed by a vast back-up of reguarly updated computerised files.

It was a French TV 'expose' of conditions in the capital's alloring industry which led t he hunger strike beginning in small church in mid-February. of work permits and documents to the 17 participants, and a promise of sympathetic consideration for other 'deserving cases!.

. It was the throwing out of these proposals and the strikers' insistence on full rights for everyone affected that led to a major escalation of support.

As well as a Strike Committee, a supporters' group had been formed and this now mushroomed with dozens of organisations pledging assistance.

Trade union and press coverboomed with reports on the SITIRTE ANE LES PIT front pages Turkey's daily papers.

The CFDT, which until then had kept its distance, began sending high-powered delegations of bureaucrats to oversee operations.

Careerist 'left' deputies from the Socialist Party fought to identify themselves with the strike, one even bringing his tearful wife and children along as well.

Not to be outdone, SP leader Mitterand himselt paid a visit.

Bigger premises were found to cope with the new conditions. The Turkish community, formerly cowed by their illegality, now began to flood behind the hunger strikers demands.

Their new-found confidence ensured enthusiastic support for a campaign of mass leafletting of the city centre and Metro.

Seizing the opportunity

capitalise on this movement, the CFDT organised a public meeting in support.

Three thousand crammed into the hall, with a thousand more unable to get in.

The militant mood of the meeting was summed up by the slogans shouted-All or nothing! We will win, by force if we have Thousands took to the streets in solidarity demonstrations through the Turkish areas of central Paris.

Within the strike itself, changes were taking place. The pro-Maoist forces pulled out to MNOTINI IN SR begin their own hunger strike (a flop) and conflict and divisions began to appear.

Clashes in the Strike Committee and its support committee centred on moves to accommodate to and tail-end the CFDT bureaucracy.

Meanwhile the Communist Party-dominated union. CGT increased its attempts to gain influence.

Just as in May 1968 it had initially dismissed the students' struggles as 'ultra leftist' • SO their first reaction to the Turks' protest was to brand it gauchist' and ignore it.

Desperate to make up for this bad miscalculation they even began to invoke the authority of DISK, the mass trade union in Turkey run by their Stalinist counterparts in that country.

The CP's credibility among Turkish emigres had not been enhanced by its main supporters within the community having well-paid posts as CGT bureaucrats.

But the strike's leadership problems did not prevent the rejection of a further government attempt to crush the action.

It was proposed that a working party enquiry should be established to be composed of government ministers, and representatives from the strike committee, the CFDT, the employers-and the Turkish ambassador to France!

Correctly seeing it as a diversion, the strikers refused to accept the dropping of their demands as a precondition and their subsequent boycott meant it never got off the ground.

Though by this time fatigue and exhaustion were making the hunger strike difficult to sustain, confirmation of the continuing support and growing political character of the movement it had generated came at a benefit rally called in solidarity with exiled Chileans.

Internationale

Again, thousands of Turkish workers and their families turned out and the evening ended with chants of Down with Pinochet! Venceremos! and singing of the Internationale.

On March 5 the strikers decided to call off their action. A statement from Stolern on the government's position appeared two weeks later.

The contents were predictable. Though written deliberately in ambiguous and evasive language, the message was clear -there would be no real concessions on the granting of work permits.

In line with the governments aims to 'reform' the industry, the letter referred . repeatedly to the Labour Law and a host of other legislation.

Its stress on the need to strictly impose Health and Safety regulations was aimed obviously at disqualifying the vast majority of workers who have no alternative to their tenement room workshops.

Insisting on these provisions automatically excluded these workers from being given employment contracts by the bosses, yet having a contract was made an absolute condition of applying for a work permit!

Stolern's letter wound up by saying the problem had to be dealt with in a 'humanitarian' way.

Earlier indications of a tendency by sections of the workers leaders to compromise with the union bureaucracy were confirmed at the meeting called to consider the statement.

The workers had elected 35 shop stewards as their representatives and these were joined by the former strikers and top bureaucrats from the CFDT.

Although the meeting ended without any clear decisions, significantly only a minority argued strongly that it was a complete sell-out of their demands.

The struggle now is for a principled leadership within this group of workers.

Formerly virtually ignored, their turn to the CFDT has transformed that union's HACUITEX textile workers section from little more than an inactive rump into a potentially strong force of thousands.

But to take things any further demands a head-on collision with the reformist bureaucracy who aim to strangle the workers' independence.

This cannot effectively be done without a sharp fight amongst the Turkish workers this point make up their political leadership.

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themselves against the confused, petty-bourgeois forces who at