FRANCE end of the strikes. But the arctic weather did a job as thorough as any mass pickets could have in disrupting road, rail and air transport, putting several nuclear power stations out of Lessons of the strikes operation (the water-cooling systems were frozen) and preventing many people from working. Braving the cold in Paris on Monday, January 12, a couple of thousand right-wingers and shopkeepers sang the Marseillaise at belated demonstrations against the strikers called by the
UDF/RPR
IT IS AN INDEX of the rapidly changing situation in France that a and the fascist National Front.
major shift in the political and social climate has to be noted before
If all these problems weren't the new year has hardly begun. The train drivers, metro workers and to worry
Chirac, another enough crisis had been building up. As a result electricians have not emerged victorious from their tug of war with of the student struggles in December the government. But despite their obvious relief, the bourgeois parties and the current strike actions, the that regained control of parliament on March 16 last year have not franc had begun to slide uncontrollably downwards to its lowest-ever level in the
European Monetary
System (EMS). (3)
An emergency held in Brussels meeting was on
January 11 to try to salvage something of the situation. The French government pressed for a devaluation of the
Deutschmark, blaming its rise for their own currency problems, and wanting desperately to avoid a devaluation of the franc, which would have in effect wrecked the government's anti-inflationist policies.
a touching show of anti-workingclass solidarity, a compromise was reached at Brussels by revaluing the
Deutshmark and the Dutch guilder by three per cent, and the Belgian and Luxembourg francs by two per cent, thus temporarily taking the pressure off the French currency.
Although the railworkers won some concessions out of the SNCF management, the strike was a partial failure come out of this test any stronger. CHRISTIAN PICQUET the government's hard line took a hammering. While they could not win their major demands, the railway workers did not go back to work empty-handed. They forced the management of the SNCF [Societe de Fer, National Railway company] to withwages supposedly designed to permit advancement on the basis of individual merit. Transport Minister Jacques Douffiagues will have get an extraordinarily favorable relationship of forces if he wants to present another scheme like this in the future.
In the same way the state bosses of the electricity board [EDF] and the Paris metro authority [RATP] had to run hard to save the guts of their wage policy. They wanted to impose a two per cent ceiling on wage increases this year. And they were forced straightaway to give three per cent increases, their top limit. This was certainly a paltry concession in view of the steady erosion of buying power. Nonetheless, this is the first time in more than a decade that a government has had at least to go through the motions of negotiating. Premier Jacques Chirac's arrogance and authority have been badly buffeted. The latest SOFRES-Figaro because of misleadership by the ~ I WOULD GIVE YOU A RAISE, BUT naitonal trade-unions, combined with I'DJUST HAVE TROUBLE FROM the limitations of the national coordination. Although the train drivers organized nationally, they represented just one section of the SNCF workers. Without an alternative leadership with a perspective of linking up the demands and struggles of all the strikers, the movement could not go much further. The next task is to build such an alternative inside the labour move-
But this will not be the end of the story. Wage negotiations for the public sector begin at the end of January -next in line will be the metro and bus workers in Paris, teachers, civil servants, dockers, miners and workers. It promises to be a long, hard winter for the Chirac government.
The EMS is a mechanism used by many leading member countries the European Community maunlalr fixed exchange rates against each other's currencies, and to maintain a floating rate against outside currencies.
GOVERNMENT.
PLANTL
magazine poll shows that his popularity has dropped by seven points.
The strikers very nearly created a fully-fledged political crisis. No one should be fooled by the civil-war language or the appeals to what the right has to offer by way of muscle, enraged bosses and small shopkeepers
1968. [The demonstration of the "silent majority" called by de Gaulle in an attempt to counter the worker-student mobilizations.] The anti-strike hysteria. only proves that force is the only language the right knows and that nothing can be won without a fight.
At the same time, we should not overlook the discordant notes within the majority. On the one hand, we have Raymond Barre [leader "moderate" right UDF] dialogue." On we have fire-breathing from the likes of Toubon [chair of the premier's party, the RPR. While the industry against "anti-French strikes," the minister of labor Philippe Seguin appealing for "strong and responsible unions." There is a lot more than nuances involved here. These discords reveal how afraid the bosses are of a social explosion catching them by
"Nothing will be the same again," the students said at the end of their mobilizations. The same sort of thing is being said now by those who
La more than three-week-long strike. By showing that the government could be forced to retreat, the youth opened up a breach. The rail, electricity and metro workers have widened it. Their failure, because there was one, was not this time because of insufficient commitment by the workers. In the categories mobilizations among the biggest since the Liberation.
The strike wave was broken only by the refusal of the union leaderships to give the struggle an outlet corto the stakes involved. Jose Perez, a member of the coordinacommittee of train explained the problem quite clearly interview published in Le Matin of January 12: 'the national unions lacked the will to organize a big united action."
It is a good bet that this lesson will be remembered. In fact, one of the outstanding features of these last weeks is undoubtedly the determination of the ranks to take their own affairs in hand, not to rely any longer on the apparatuses whose practises they know too well. The strike committees and coordinating committees in the SNCF and the general assemblies in EDF helped to make the strike massive and united.
These organizations were so important to the workers that in many SNCF depots one of the reasons for suspending the action was to preserve this cohesiveness. While the concerted once again, it might very well not happen that way the next time. More battles on the horizon today, we are complete change in the social climate of the country. The workers and the mass movement are regaining confidence in their strength. relearning the traditional methods of collective struggle. One index, among others, of this new climate is the inability of the right to whip up public opinion against the strikers. When the parties of the right - the RPR, the and the National Front brought a few thousand people into the streets to demonstrate against the strikes, a poll by Le Figaro [the most authoritative right-wing Paris daily] that only a minority of Parisians were up in arms against "abuses of the right to strike." And they were most affected by the work
All of these aspects are important advantages for the battles that loom horizon. Finance Minister Edouard Balladur's deflationist policy is not going to extricate French from its crisis. On the contrary, dark clouds are building up. The last months of the old year were marked by a flagging of the growth production. The OECD's economic forecasts indicate that this will continue in 1987, in the context of more difficult international vironment resulting from weak and unbalanced growth rates and cut-throat competition in trade.
In this situation, far from promoting a revival of productive investment, the measures taken by the finance minister will mainly stimulate speculative investment and lead to a new and tougher round of austerity.
Is this another one of the catastrophic scenarios that those revolutionary Cassandras are supposedly so fond of? Consider the facts. The readjustment of parity among the European currencies on January 11 points clearly to the contradictions in which the government is floundering. It can take comfort in a procedure that saved the franc's official position. But it is no less true that the revaluation of the Deutschmark, the guilder and the Belgian franc mean devaluation of the French currency. This will be reflected in higher prices for imported goods and logically by a new rise of infla. financial markets comes at the same time as the revival of oil prices and the inevitable effects of the freeing of prices in and the services ordered by Balladur a few months ago. Following time-honored prescriptions, the authorities will call on the workers to tighten their belts further, and the workers will find their social benefits and buying power being cut. Balla dur is already threatening that "if
I will take measures to contain inflation."
In the two months that have gone the students, railway and metro workers have marked out the way forward. It is a way by which the majority can escape having to pay the price for a policy in the interests of a small minority of exploiters. It is a way that will put them in a better position to block the attacks that are being prepared against their living and working conditions or against their social benefits. It is a way by which they can force the government once and for all to withdraw the harmful schemes that it had to postpone at the time of the student uprising, starting with its xenophobic reform of the Nationality Code. It is a way finally that will enable the majority of the population to get rid of a government represents war on the working people, to oust Chirac and his team.
This way stands in radical opposition to the consensus politics of the "political class," to polite cohabitation [between the Socialist Party President Francois Mitterrand and the rightist majority in parliament], in the name of "fighting inflation" This way means building a relationship of forces that can force the enemies of the working people in government and management to retreat, it means returning to the traditional methods of class struggle.
From this standpoint, there will be no lack of tests, in particular in the public sector, where wage negotia. tions are to open soon and where the potential for struggles has shown itself to be so great. Everywhere there is the same exasperation against the bullying moves of the rulers. It is clear that a coordinated strug gle of government workers have an excellent chance of succeeding where the isolated battles in SNCF, EDF and the RATP failed.
Such a confrontation would spur action, which is the precondition for a real working-class counter-offensive. This is the important lesson that has to be drawn from the battle that has International Viewpoint 26 January 1987