prepare the conditions for overturning the new majority. They are doing this by several methods.
The CNPF is taking advantage of all the government's measures to cut back the social gains of the workers. The stalling tactics of the bosses' phoney industry-by-industry wage negotiations that were supposed to pave the way for an end to the wage freeze show how determined they are. By early November, only 15 contracts had been signed, affecting 450,000 workers.
At the same time, the bosses have turned a deaf ear to all the appeals to invest. Despite the tax breaks that have been offered, the investors' strike continues. The bosses are stashing away the subsidies to use them in restructuring and increasing their at the workers' expense. Along with this, the CNPF and the SNMI are complaining bitterly about the sentequaces of legislation to benefit
Mauroy's November speech announcing the shift of the cost of family allowances to the workers and making available all sorts of loans to capitalists is an indication of what the truth is on this score. The fact is that Gattaz, the chairman of the CNPF, is guided in this respect more by a desire to destabilize the government than by a calculation of the economic benefits accruing to the bosses from the government's measures.
THE BOSSES MOBILIZE IN THE
STREETS AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT
The CNPF and the bosses in general are mobilizing against the government. For this purpose, they have been manipulating sectors such as the doctors, the farmers organizations, and the defenders of private schools. These demonstrations indicate that the bosses are prepared to try to make a show of strength in the streets. Moreover, the fact that the bosses are using flanking tactics does not mean that they have excluded head-on attacks.
The unemployment fund, UNEDIC, could easily have been refloated, since the five trade-union confederations involved in the negotiations made a major concession, agreeing that the workers would pick up 17 billion francs of the deficit. Nonetheless, the CNPF has broken off the negotiations and is threatening to put the fund in bankruptcy. The bosses think that it is essential to break up a system of sional unemployment and therefore unsuited to the chronic unemployment of a period of economic crisis. But the bosses also wanted • to humiliate the government, which had tried to arbitrate the dispute, offering a Solomonic decision.
A second example is the Brest shipyards. The Brest bosses laid off workers. The government cancelled the layoffs. The bosses refused to accept the cancellation. Chotard himself, one of the leading figures in the CNPF, went to Brest. He not only advised the local bosses to remain firm; he suggested that the bosses of smaller companies declare bankruptcy in order to avoid complying with the government order.
Carworkers at Talbot on strike (DR) THE TEST OF THE UPCOMING MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
The right is linking this offensive with preparations for the municipal elections. If the government and the majority parties are beaten, the right will use the March elections as a springboard for demanding that the date be moved up for the parliamentary elections. This perspective, however, involves two problems for the right. The institutions of the Fifth Republic, set up as a result of De Gaulle's coup d'etat in 1958, give all power to the
Therefore, the prospect that the right faces is having to fight a prolonged offensive and running the risk of destabilizing institutions that have proved an effective bulwark against unrest. Mitterrand is in the presidential palace. It will take something more than early parliamentary elections to get him out.
The second unresolved problem is a consequence of the first. While the municipal elections are a test for the entire right, it is not united about the perspectives. No authoritative leader is emerging from its ranks with a political plan for uniting the offensive and leading it to vic-
Under direct or diffuse pressure from of-living allowances, the boss of the contions are won by the right, this will represent a turn in the political situation opened up after May 10.
THE WORKERS ON THE DEFENSIVE?
A certain doubt is creeping into the minds of the workers. Is the offensive of the right and the bosses changing the relationship of forces? This is reflected by a moderation of demands and hesitation to mobilize for fear of "playing into the hands of the right." But the experience since May 10 confirms the fact that struggle is the only thing that makes the bosses retreat. And there has been no lack of struggles. Despite the skepticism of a lot of trade-union officials, the most recent struggles show that the relationship of forces is still in favor of the workers.
The strikes at Citroen and Talbot involved sections of workers that have traditionally not been very well organized, the immigrants. However, these with less experience in struggle than the rest of the working class went into action and forced the bosses' organization in the PSA automotive empire to yield.
After the workers returned from vacation this year, the feelings were running so strongly against the company union straw bosses that the foremen their ranks, the union leaderships have wriggled, calling scattered actions and watering down demands and the objectives of mobilizations. The various confederations continue to follow a divisive policy that makes the fightback even more fragmented.
Despite this bag of tricks resorted to by the union bosses, even in the context of these days of action, where unity was achieved, the mobilizations were often powerful ones. This was the case for the workers in the national gas and electric company, the Paris tax clerks, and the railroad workers in Ile-et-Vilaine in Brittany. Moreover, in many congresses and national meetings of trade unions, leaders argued for organizing a general fightback. This happened, for example, at the national meeting of 4,000 CGT shop stewards in the national gas and electricity company and at the congress of CGT workers in the nationalized sector of the armament industry.
THE GOVERNMENT LOSING
CREDIBILITY WITH THE WORKERS
The government tried to present itself as the arbiter in these conflicts. It was shown up as a supporter of the bosses. In Citroen, the wage increase won by the cern, Essel, was able to use a statement by the Minister of Labor declaring illegal the FNAC system of cost-of-living allowances tied to prices. This judgment was made, scandalously enough, on the basis of a Gaullist decree in 1959, the year following the successful coup d'etat.
Thus, the workers have learned to some extent in experience that the government does not support their mobilizations and sometimes even displays open hostility to them. Moreover, a lot of workers involved in struggles have sought aid and support from the parliamentary deputies belonging to the new majority. Most often they have found a friendly deputy, but these deputies have not done anything more than listen in a polite and sympathetic way to their demands.
In every case, these deputies voted for the Beregovoy plan cutting social benefits and approved the austerity policy. This has made enough of an impression on the workers that the idea that there is a need for action by the workers and the unions independent of the government has been gaining ground, despite the obstacles that have been placed in the way of mobilization. This attitude has gained momentum inasmuch as the hopes placed in the new
In the wake of May 10, the workers and the were unable to regain any of the ground lost before the summer. Locals of real unions were formed in the plants that strike in October in defense of their cost- down. Nonetheless, there was a strong belong to the trust, reflecting a high level of combativity.(1)
It is clear that these struggles were not
Open Letter to Francois Mitterrand and just a flareup in a backward sector. They are rather the clearest expression since
Socialist Party and Communist Party Deputies
May 10 of determination by the workers to bring "the new course" into the plants.
While attacks on the workers such as
This open letter was launched by one thousand workers in the Rouen region on the cutbacks in social benefits and buying
September 28, 1982. It has now been signed by over 30,000 workers throughout power have been successful, the workers
France. Committees from towns all over France of those who have signed it have have not been defeated. They have not held two national meetings, and are preparing to present it to the parliamentary yet begun to fight, and the tensions are groups of the Socialist Party and Communist Party, and the the President, Francois building up. There will be a delayedreaction effect in those sectors directly hit by the drop in real wages. Nothing has
The measures which the government has taken since June, and those which are been settled, even if most workers have planned for the months ahead, seem very serious to us.
remained with their hands in their
To reduce buying power, to provide for restrictions on social security benefits, pockets.
to increase the unemployment insurance deductions from workers' pay are all going
A POWDERKEG IN STEEL worsen our living and working conditions. At the same time the employers are continuing to lay-off workers, or to close a large number of enterprises.
Such a delayed-reaction effect can be predicted in the steel industry. Minister
These austerity measures are not hitting at those who are responsible for the of Technology and Science Chevenecrisis, the capitalists, who are keeping their profits.
ment's commitment to applying the
This way of acting will only disgust the workers, and encourage the employers to
Davignon Plan (which means 12,000 layoffs on the way) will rekindle the struggles in the steel centers, and they will be fought with the determination that comes
June was declared illegal by struggle in
Auroux, the minister of labor. When the workers at the NAC bookstores went on demand more.
We refuse to accept these measures.
parties and unions did not press their advantage. They did not try to mobilize the masses that had brought Giscard
We elected you on May 10, 1981 to launch a new course.
from desperation. This smoldering com-
We know that the big employers, as well as the right - Giscard, Chirac and bativity has reached such a heat that the
Lecanuet - will not stop at any means, any attack, to stop this new course. They trade-union confederations have been will go as far as street demonstrations, and they will mobilise their troops for the obliged to offer an outlet. That is the only meaning of the days of action sche-
We are ready to mobilise, to ensure that the choice that was made on May 10 is duled in October and November.
respected, against the bosses and the right. We will do so united and together, whatever our political positions or trade-union affiliation.
(1).
Previously the only union allowed by the
Citroen management was the Confederation des
We demand that buying power is maintained and that lay-offs be stopped.
Syndicats Libre (Free Trade-unions Confederation) affiliated to the International Confedera-
You, the President and the members of parliament must respect our hopes and tion of Free Trade Unions.
The workers went demands. You should take from the privileged, take some of their billions, and not on strike in early summer 1982 to get rid of these unions, and for free union elections.
6 municipal elections.
take from us.
the workers from mobilizing with the Facing a reduction of their export market, aspiration among the masses for unity. Far from challenging the logic of a sick system, the CP and the SP, the CGT, as well as the CFDT and FO, adapted themselves for administering the crisis.
UNION BUREAUCRATS TRY TO
CONVINCE WORKERS TO WORK
HARDER FOR LESS
These organizations accept the argument that in order to maintain jobs it is necessary to aid the companies and unite bosses, unions, and workers in this. Some advocate that the workers accept wage cuts for the sake of the company's competitivity. This rigged game amounts to asking the workers to accept the reduction of their buying power, to agree to argument that this government has a long. term lease on power and that this should not be put in danger. A lot of workers are
"if this had happened in Giscard's time, people would already be marching in the streets." But today even though the government is administering the capitalist crisis the argument that it is supposed to represent used as a pretext for giving up the fight
The Beregovoy plan for social welfare, the wage freeze, increased deductions for unemployment insurance, and the like are all getting past without a blow being struck, with the workers parties and unions agreeing not to notice. So, the SP the foreign firms would get their governments to impose retaliatory tariffs. This would lead to a spread of protectionism that would shrink export markets still further. What is more, protectionist measures would hit French industries that export a lot of their products, such as the aerospace and automotive industries. This would result in higher unemployment in
Since, in accordance with the dictates of capitalist management, the French firms would have to maintain their level of competitiveness on the European and world markets, even if protectionism became systematic, would continue to try to push down the and the CP, the CGT, and the CFDT are level of wages and employment in order work more and harder, while the bosses leading the workers down a blind alley. to maintain their ability to compete with keep the power to fire as they please, not invest, and lie about the real state of the company's ledgers.
To sum it up, this means turning back the clock of the trade-union movement. It means that workers should work harder for less. This is unacceptable on the face of it. Wage sacrifices have never guaranteed the maintenance of jobs. As long as the bosses keep their monarchical power in the plants, as long as they get the profits, there cannot be any sharing of the responsibility between
Since these organizations argue that workers should take responsibility for the companies, they claim that the most important task of the workers movement is aiding management. The top union bureaucrats — Marie, Krasucki, Herzog -as well as Mitterrand, all talk the same language. The time has come to bridge the old class barrier between the owners of the means of production and the exploited producers so that the workers and the bosses can run the factories
The CFDT says that the bosses have maintained an outmoded system of social relations, and that it has now to overcome this by assuming the role of making proposals. The CP says that co-management today is no longer class collaboration because the bosses have shown their incompetence. What is needed today, all the unions say, is shop committees that will make proposals for improving production, unions that will work out alternative plans, and vigilance against waste.
A boss class that has not given an inch since the May 10 victory is not going to consider sharing its power for one instant. It will fight to the death to hold on to its power. Sharing the management of a factory with the boss is just another way of saying that the workers should make all the sacrifices for the sake of productivity.
DON'T MAKE PROBLEMS FOR THE
WORKERS' GOVERNMENT?
When the bosses are waging a class war against buying power and jobs, it is criminal to hold out your hand to the enemy and offer to collaborate with him.
All the unions are trying to hold back
The plea that we cannot cause problems for a government that is helping the bosses push their rate of profit back up and to restructure their plants means asking us to give up every immediate demand, it becomes an alibi for surrendering on everything, it means opening the way for the return of the right.
A poison is seeping into some layers of activists, the idea that nothing can be done about this crisis, that it is a necessary stage to escape from inflation and unemployment. The propaganda campaign the government is waging under the slogan "Face the Truth" is designed precisely to spread this idea, that the national economy has to be defended as it is, with its capitalist profit logic.
"MADE IN FRANCE, OK?"
The French CP is pushing a similar campaign. Its recent posters raise the cry "Made in France, O.K.?" What these arguments boil down to in essence is that the crisis can be eliminated by a national effort to increase the competitiveness of French products. In order to accomplish this, the CP and CGT leadership maintain, something more than a special effort and cooperation between workers and bosses is needed. That is, we need protectionist measures to keep out foreign products and to make sure that French goods are bought instead of them. The crisis is supposed to have been caused simply by the incompetence of the capitalists as manacampaigns have impact simply appeal to common sense, but their apparent realism is only very superficial.
Blocking imports leads inevitably to higher prices. It import quotas were multiplied, French workers would have to buy products made in France all right. Sheltered from foreign competition, these goods would inexorably go up in price. At the same time, the foreign products that would be sold in smaller quantities would also increase in price to assure the Japanese or West German bosses the same rate of profit as the French ones. If they exported less, they would regain what they lost by higher prices.
Furthermore, it would not end there.
foreign products.
Fundamentally, the SP's "Face the Truth" campaign and the CP's "Made in France, O.K.?" campaign are a diversion. The French bourgeoisie is trying to make the workers pay for the crisis, for the restructuring of the productive system, and for the shutdown of branches considered
The SP and CP can struct all sorts of schemes, but this reality cannot be gotten around. That is why it is to attack the power of the bosses and the law of profit.
NO WAY FORWARD WITHOUT ATTACKING THE LAWS
This system is unjust and immoral. For in 1979, Francois (boss of the tire trust) declared to the French, German, and Swiss internal revenue services that his personal income
109,000,300 francs month. And after 15 years an ordinary worker (OS) earns 3,700 francs a month in the Michelin factories.
The bosses shed salt tears, complaining that there is a recession on and they cannot pay. What do generally unverifiable claims like that matter for the workers?
jobs are basic immediate needs, regardless of whether the bosses say they can pay or not. The demands the LCR supports correspond to the needs of
A 35-hour week with no cut in wages is the least that can be done right away to deal with unemployment. The bosses lay off people when they consider that they have a surplus of the commodity that labor power represents for them. It is a commodity for the bosses, but the only survival the workers have.
A 35-hour workweek would make possible massive hiring of the unemployed, who are mainly women and youth. This means, of course, taking on the bosses, forcing them to retreat. But then the only thing the bosses understand is a relationship of forces. The forty-hour week was won by the June 1936 general strike. The Gattazes of the day were pleading poverty no less piteously than the present ones. So, to provide jobs now, we need a 35-hour workweek, whether the bosses consider this possible or not!
expropriate them. This involves another trol over production in order to reorga-
When the bosses tell us, "you are out to ruin the economy," our answer is that this economy is based on their principles and their ownership, and that we are not responsible for it, although we are the ones who produce the wealth. It is they who are responsible for unemployment, the waste of human beings, and the stalling of technological advance.
The way to fight inflation is with a sliding scale of wages and prices. Wages cannot be tied to productivity or the success of the plant. They must be based on prices by means of automatic and retroactive cost-of-living increases in accordance with an index that reflects price increases.
THE POOREST FIRST? officials are saying, help the poorly paid first, the others can wait. The buying power of the workers has to be defended, and not just that of the workers at the bottom of the scale. The demagogic statements of these union and government officials is based on the idea that total wages must not rise, in order not to overburden the companies. This already represents resignation. In fact, these people set a cutoff point, beyond which wages cannot be defended. example, the minimum notion is this that workers cannot go beyond 7,200 francs a month (that is, twice the minimum CFDT)? In trade, a lot of high managerial personnel make less than that other hand, in certain sectors of petrochemicals and aerospace, workers make more than that.
Total wages must rise necessary to meet the workers' needs for buying power. What is more, the very trade-union confederations that have formed special unions for professionals are now telling us that such people do not have to be defended. The only way the workers have to win the professionals over is to show them that they have an interest in joining the working-class camp. To cast them off altogether means driving them into the camp it is neither an accomplished inevitable that they will line up with the bosses.
All wages set by contract and law must be defended by a sliding scale, and in heavy industry that includes a wage scale that goes up to 10,200 francs a month.
Is making the bosses pay a simplistic or irresponsible slogan? It is a simple thing to say that this has to be the real objective of working-class mobilizations. To cut through the smokescreens of the reformists and the verbiage about helping to manage the companies and buckling kind of logic, which has been developed by the workers movement in the past. It has to be repopularized. REORIENT PRODUCTION TO MEET
SOCIAL NEEDS
The bosses produce to make a profit. Regardless of whether social needs are left unsatisifed or not, the bosses decide in a completely anarchistic way to halt or continue production in accordance with the sole criterion of profit. The law of profit has to be replaced by a law of satisfying social needs.
Let's take the example of steel, which is one of the most illustrative. The bosses eliminate 15,000 more jobs. Why? Because there is no more need for steel? To the contrary, this basic product used in building housing. And there is a lack of housing. The CP program says that it is necessary to build 500,000 dwellings a year. Before May 10, the SP said that 16 out of 55 million French people lived in homes that were not even minimally equipped. But the capitalists consider that it is not profitable to meet these needs. Nonetheless, the nationalized USINOR and SACILOR steel trusts. These two large enterprises could be turned immediately to production orientmeeting the most urgent social
The utilization of the nationalized sector should be the keystone of such a policy. With its present scope, it could serve as the springboard toward an overall reorientation of production. The nationalized banks hold 77.1% of credit and 85.8% of deposits. The nationalized sector accounts for 33% of corporate investment and 12% of the Gross Domestic Product. Multinational giants such as Rhone-Poulenc in the artificial fibers industry (the third largest in the field worldwide) and the Thomson electrical appliances trust are now included in the nationalized sector. They could be oriented to meeting the immediate social needs (for household appliances and clothing).
The task of a workers government would be to use this public sector to take public initiatives to provide jobs and meet the needs of the people. The extreme concentration of these units of production makes this task easier, as well as making it easier to establish workers con"The bosses should pay for unemployment' (DR)
we Patrono
dowvent Paya
nize it.
WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING TO
COME FROM?
Where is the money going to come from? Even though neither Credit Agricole (which used to be the world's largest credit concern), nor real estate credit, nor consumer credit, nor the foreign banks have been nationalized, the nationalized credit sector could be concentrated into one bank with a great pooled capital. Such a bank could provide the funds necessary for the nationalized sector.
Today, the capitalists are still pillaging the nationalized sector. In both the railroads and Social Insurance system, capitalists are diverting the funds. A centralization of the nationalized banks must be accompanied by the establishment of exchange control, in order to stop the flight of capital.
Not only should controls be set up on foreign trade should be renegotiated. The present government has done this with Algeria. It agreed to raise the price of Algerian natural gas in order to safeguard the sales of French industrial products in Algeria. It is possible to oblige our trading partners to renegotiate the terms of trade in conformity with a reorientation of production to meet social need. When a country such as France is carrying a foreign debt of 233 billion francs, that means there is something to negotiate. If you are a big debtor, you are also an important customer.
THE TASKS OF THE LCR
The crisis can only be ended by the victory of one or the other of the two camps that exist, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. Therefore, the LCR, with its limited means, has to work to prepare our class for this confrontation. This work has to be directed toward two objectives. The first task is to promote united mobilizations of the working class. This means giving impetus to struggles for immediate demands, in defense of our social gains, have an anticapitalist
In order to accomplish this, we have to remove the obstacles to mobilization. It is necessary to overcome the divisions by stepping up appeals for unity and making efforts in more and more places to pro-
LE PATRONAT RESPON down and joining in a great national effort, the LCR reaffirms that it is the bosses who are responsible for the crisis.
In order to solve the problem of jobs, production, and inflation in a lasting way, they are the ones we have to go after; we have to break their law of profit, that is,
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DU CHOMAGE DOIT PAYER!
Fightback shapes up among
US and Canadian workers mote it in action. We have to show the workers that resting on your arms means giving up without a fight in the face of the offensive by the bosses and the right. It is necessary to show in practice that the only way to get significant wage increases, more jobs, and to stop social service cutbacks is to take on the bosses.
At the same time, we have to indicate where these mobilizations have to lead that is, to disarming the bosses. One of the main obstacles to mobilizing workers is precisely the lack of anticapitalist answers being offered, the lack of to the proposals of the reformists for finding a way out of the crisis. To point the way out of this dilemma, the LCR has to reassert that socialism is the only way out of the crisis in the
In carrying out these two tasks, have to intervene in the struggles to direct action and demands against the bosses. In FNAC, at Bella, in Citroen-Levallois, and elsewhere this has been the primary role of LCR activists - to push for unity, for demands that unite the workers, objectives and forms of action that pro-
At the same time, this means that we questions of thousands of trade-union and political activists attached until recently to the dominant organizations in the workers movement, who have realized that they have been led down a blind alley but do not have any anti-capitalist alternatives.
From this standpoint, the role of the trade-union central. They will grow if they turn action, challenge the reformist orientations of the established leadership, and, by their activity and the answers they offer, revive the understanding and spirit of class-struggle unionism. The LCR has to play an active role in this anti-capitalist current that exists now, as it did with the Rouen Appeal. A national current of opinion took form around this petition drive demanding anticapitalist policies corresponding to the needs of the workers. That was a beginning.
Finally, in presenting an anti-capitalist program, the LCR has to propagate on a mass scale the revolutionary perspective that distinguishes it as an organization and is its reason for existence. CNPF: Conseil Nationale du Patronat Francais, main employers organisation.
des and Medium Industries. A newly-created rightCGT: Confederation Generale du Travail, General Confederation of Work. The largest union in France in which the majority of leaders and
Democratic French Confederation leftwing split from a Christian union in 1964. Members of all currents of the Socialist Party are active within it. The leaderThe most class collaborationist of the workers unions. It split from the CGT in 1947 claims itself independent'.
Will REISSNER North America is sunk in its deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. According to official figures, unemployment in the United States is more than 10.4 percent of the workforce and rising. In Canada the figure is 12.2 factories are operating 68.4 percent of capacity, the lowest level began keeping records in 1948. U.S. officials acknowledge that this figure would be even lower were not so many plants already shut
In Canada, industrial production has dropped more than 16 percent, and the government in Ottawa predicts that overall economic output will have plummeted more than 4 percent by the end of the
In industry after industry, U.S. and Canadian capitalists have used the crisis of their economic system to demand that workers give up hard-won gains in wages, benefits and job conditions.
The bosses' demands for concessions have been actively supported by the highest levels of the trade-union bureaucracy. These labor misleaders, totally steeped in class collaborationism, put forward the view that employers cosper belore the workers can prospe hey urge the rank-and-tile to give u what the labor movement won in pre-
The AFL-CIO officialdom parrots the line of the bosses and the U.S. and Canadian governments that current wage levels and "lax" work rules make North American industry uncompetitive and therefore the layoffs Trudeau recently put this view forward in several televised speeches calling for labor to sharply reduce its demands for wage increases. He asked Canadian workers to ponder the question, "Can we compete, not just against other Canadians ... but against the automaker of Japan, the lumber worker of Scandinavia, the wheat farmer of Nebraska?"
Union officials in Canada and the United States have taken up this refrain. They tell the ranks that if "our" companies are to be able to compete, the employers need wage relief and control over work rules. The union officialdom seconds the bosses' insistence that improvements in wages and working conditions must be tied to increased
Under the initial blows of the econoI mic downturn, many workers were conned into accepting this argument.
### LESSONS BEING DRAWN
But three years of bitter experience with concessions have started to convince many workers that givebacks have not saved jobs or solved economic problems. They have begun to see that concessions simply set in motion a deadly spiral leading to demands for further concessions.
In recent weeks, this changing consciousness has been demonstrated by steelworkers, miners, and public employees in North
Three years ago - under concerted pressure from management, administration, and union leadership - Chrysler workers agreed to a far-reaching package of givebacks. Without these they were told, the company would go bankrupt, and they would all lose their jobs. Faced with these grim alternatives, Chrysler workers accepted the need for "equality of sacrifice."
The 1979 Chrysler contract was hailed by the entire employing class as a model to be applied throughout U.S. and Cana-
But when the contract came up for rein mid-October, U.S. Chrysler workers voted down the new pact negotiated by the UAW leadership. The rejected contract offered no immediate wage increase or job protection, and contained further concessions on speedup and work
Canada, Chrysler workers offered the same contract. jected it and went on strike November 5.
In the aftermath of these votes, UAW President Douglas Fraser, who has a seat on the Chrysler board of directors, felt enough heat to temporarily step down from the company post.
Chrysler workers learned the hard way that concessions do not save jobs. In 1979, when Chrysler demanded that workers accept significantly lower wages and benefits than those received by General Motors and Ford workers, the company employed 76,000 workers. Three years later - after they gave up an estimated 1.06 billion dollars in wages and benefits and are now paid 2.68 dollars per hour less than GM and Ford workers - there are only 45,000 Chrysler workers left.
Today Chrysler is sitting on more than 1 billion dollars in cash, but still wants
Chrysler workers have said "enough is enough!" The 10,000 Canadian strikers
have had no raise since March 1980, despite two years of double-digit inflation in Canada. As a result, their buying power has dropped more
The strikers in Canada are receiving support from U.S. Chrysler workers, who know that the outcome in Canada will have a big impact on their own upcoming struggle for a new contract. Ford and GM workers also have a big stake in the outcome, since these corporations have used the Chrysler concessions to demand similar givebacks.
The Toronto Globe and Mail described the Chrysler strikers as "lemmings rushing to the ocean" who "seem to have an uncontrollable urge to hurry to the unemployment lines."
auto workers know that three years of concessions did not keep more than 30,000 of their colleagues Unemployed in the US stand in line for unemployment benefit (DR) from the unemployment lines.
The rejection of the Chrysler contract in the United States and Canada shows that workers are beginning to break from the deadend strategy of class collaboration - the idea that what is good for the company is good for them.
"I can't meet my mortgage payments told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "Neither can a lot of the fellows in the plant. If we're going to go under, we're going to make damn sure the company does too." with company claims that it would go bankrupt if the workers refuse more concessions. "Let it go down," he said, "I'm going down." showing that the way to fight for jobs is to stand up for the interests of their class, no matter what the employers say the results will be for profits and business
STEELWORKERS SAY "NO"
Just as the UAW's 1979 Chrysler contract was a model the employers tried to ram down the throats of other workers, so too was the no-strike United Steelworkers of America agreed to with the steel companies in
But rank-and-file steelworkers are also drawing the lessons of their experiences over the past decade. And they are resisting company demands for greater conces-
On November 18, the executive board of the USWA unanimously accepted a 45month contract that would have reduced average earnings for steelworkers by 1.50 dollars per hour, in cash and 75 cents in benefits in the first year alone.
Steelworkers President Lloyd McBride claimed the bosses insisted on these takebacks, and that a strike would only lead to greater use of imported steel.
But the very next day, USWA officials, who with the mood of the ranks, overwhelmingly rejected the contract. Clearly the example of the Chrysler workers encouraged this resistance.
Following the vote, MeBride that he had tried to persuade industry negotiators not to insist on so many con-
But "The industry said these were things they had to have," he la-
MINERS OUST LEADERSHIP
On November 9, U.S. coal miners sent a strong signal that they intend for their union to fight hard for their interests by voting out incumbent United Mine Workers President Sam Church. Church had vowed to return the union to cooperation with the mine owners. In his place, the
Richard Trumka, who campaigned against giving up past gains
In 1972 the miners ousted the corrupt regime of Tony Boyle, who was noted for sweetheart deals with the mine owners and terrorism against the rank-and-file. Through that battle for union democracy, the miners won the right to vote on their contract - a weapon they have put to good use. Since then the UMWA has been the single biggest obstacle in the labor movement to the takeback campaign of the employers and their
In 1977 the mine owners proposed a contract that contained provisions against the right to strike, drastic curbs on the power of union safety committees, and sharp reductions in health and retirement
Although the union president recommended acceptance of that contract, the miners voted it down and struck for 111 days for a better deal. In the process they defied the Carter administration, which invoked a Taft-Hartley "back to work"
In 1981 the miners again blocked company attempts to cripple the union and expand nonunion coal. Voting down the tirst contract proposal, which had been endorsed by UMWA President Church, they struck for 77 days before a settlement was reached.
Today the miners face a stepped-up drive by the employers, who insist that profits must come before miners' health and safety, or their right to a decent
With tens of thousands of miners on layoffs, the coal companies have instituted speedup and cutbacks on safety. The mining of nonunion coal has sharply increased. The Reagan administration is trying to gut federal health and safety legis-
All these issues will come to a head when the union contract expires in September 1984. By rejecting the policies of the Church misleadership, the have taken a big step toward arming their union for that fight.
The editors of the Washington Post registered their concern over the miners vote and the Chrysler strike: «The election results suggested that UMW members refuse to accept the fact that the coal industry does not exist in a vacuum and that miners' wages ultimately depend on the competitiveness of the product they produce. It is a fact others like to ignore: the Chrysler workers who are striking in Canada, for example."
ONE-DAY STRIKE IN QUEBEC
In Quebec on November 10, hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers showed their determination to resist cuts in their wages and elimination of thousands of jobs by staging a one-day strike that shut down schools, Montreal mass transit, and many of the province's health
The workers also authorized union leaders to organize a general strike of unlimited duration if the need arises.
In pressing their demands, the publicworkers rejected the provincial government's claim that economic disaster looms over Quebec unless expenditures are drastically reduced.
As all these developments show, a new mood is developing among workers in the United States and Canada. beginning to see that the way to defend their jobs and living standards is to use the power of their unions to resist the employers' demands, not to seek ways to cooperate with the bosses in boosting profits. A fightback is beginning to shape