France Strike Wave

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Steel workers of the USINOR complex at Dunkirk last week voted to continue their strike and occupation of sections of the plant. Their struggle - against management attempts to cut lay-off pay and make drastic reductions in the working week - was abruptly sharpened at the beginning of May when a large force of armed riot police invaded the steel works and took over key points.

The strikers are demanding just over £20 per month increase to cover cost of living rises, and 100% pay during time lost, including strikes. The main unions involvedthe Communist Party-led CGT and the reformist CFDT - have appealec for support from the rest of the French steel industry, but only in the form of token stoppages.

CUT ORDERS

What lies behind the attack on the USINOR workers is the same world-wide fall in the demand for steel that threatens the jobs of 20,000 British Steel Corporation workers: Orders to the Dunkirk plant have fallen 30-40% in the last four months, more serious than any fall in European steel markets since the 1930s.

The USINOR struggle is only one or many in renen industry and services during this month, which has brought many sections into battle against unemployment and to the erosion of wages by inflation. At Brest, in NW France workers at the "Transocean" clothing factory have demanded that union officials call an occupation against management plans to sack more than half the labour force. In Paris, tobacco distribution workers continued their strike which started at the end of April in support of demands for cost of living increases. Their claim was supported by sympathy stoppages in several cigarette factories in the Paris area. Also in Paris, print workers and journalists of the daily paper Le Parisien Libre began an indefinite strike at the weekend, after two months of negotiations and partial actions against management efforts to sack amost 400 printworkers.

Electrical power workers of all the major unions in France struck for one day a week ago in support of pay claims. Power supplies were seriously hit with a number of major manufacturers including the car firm Peugeot being forced to shut down for the day. Only one of the power workers' unions however, the reformist CFDT, has announced plans for continued action in support of the claim.

In Besancon on May 6th two strikers at the Unimel bakery were injured on the picket line when management brought in blacklegs. And at Revin in Eastern France, nelson nt then Dranahna Moonmina workers ar ine rorscner Ctramics and Sanitary ware plant entered their fourth week of strike action against management cuts in working hours - the result of a sharp drop in house construction over the last few months. At the same time in Bordeaux, on the West coast, city buses have been stopped since April by a drivers' strike in support of a wage claim.

France is only one of the Common Market countries where workers are facing sharper struggles The Workers Socialist League was formed on December 22nc now over jobs and wages. In 1974 after over 200 members were expelled from the Brussels a week ago about a dozen Workers Revolutionary Party. demonstrators were injured when riot police attacked a march of striking local government workers.

About 5,000 employees of the city Healy leadership and the Workers Press. administration were on strike over a pay claim. 2,000 attempted to demonstrate and the police were called in. Legal and prison officials in Belgium also took action over. pay.

document was expelled.

OCCUPATION ¡revolutionary parties.

In West Germany at the Seibel cement works near Dusseldorf workers ended almost two months of occupation of the plant last week.

The occupation - the first in recent years in W. Germany - was a response to management threats of immediate sackings. The occu- the WRP from the working class became clear. pation was called off when the court ruled that immediate sackings were illegal, but strike action and picketing continue while the unions negotiate with the owners on the future of the plant.

The fight to defend jobs and wages thus emerges as an international question for the working class posing the questions of programme and leadership which can only be answered by the building of Trotskyist parties. without compensation under workers control"

construct the new party.