A 'human face'?

Scan page 9

THE French car industry is scarcely in a better state than Britain's. Talbot, formerly Chrysler, is particularly slumpridden. Its share of the French market has declined from 10% to 4½ %.

As Simca (French Chrysler), the Poissy factory was already notorious for tough management. It is now under the ownership of the Peugeot-Citroen corporation, France's most brutal hard-line bosses. They want to cut the 17,000 Poissy workforce, eventually by half, and put in robots.

For a long time the shop floor at Poissy was dominated by the fascist CSL 'union' (see other article). Part of the background to the recent strike was the success of the unions in breaking the CSL domination. At the last elections for trade union 'delegates' (roughly equivalent to shop stewards), the Communist Party led CGT got 42% of the shop floor votes, the CSL 35%, the Socialistleaning CFDT 9% and the other union federation, FO, 4%.

This success reflected years of courageous struggle by the CGT - put to waste during the strike because the CGT was tied by its links to the CP labour, Jack Ralite.

The 1,905 workers sacked were overwhelmingly Africans, and a large proportion of them trade union activists.

Yet the government considered that the agreement on the sackings was a model of how to manage industrial rationalisation with a 'human face"

It was 1,000 sackings less than reugeot origmally demanded, they said. Also, the sacked workers would not simply be thrown onto the dole.

20,000 francs (about £1,700) would be on offer as a grant to any employer offering them a new job. They would get 20,000 francs discount on a vehicle if they wanted to set up as a truckdriver or taxi-driver. 100 would be given training in car repair by the company. Another 1,300 would enter a government training scheme.

It didn't look so 'human" to the sacked workers who had no faith that these training schemes would bring them a new job. Some of them responded by demanding 200,000 francs (£17,000), to enable them to reestablish themselves in their home countries.

A Moroccan worker expla a French newspaper:

"All I demand is what's due to me, my rights - the cost of a training, compensation for my ruined life."

But another Moroccan said: 'We say, like the CPDT, no sackings. Repatriation allowances bring back bad memories of the Stoleru period. (Stoleru was the minister responsible for immigration in the previous right wing government). But even the CFDT has gone to meet the management and negotiate repatriation allowances for everyone. At the end of the day it's almost FO's (the right wing union's) position, if not the CSL's!"

The 200,000 francs demand reflects the immigrant workers' bitterness against rising racism in France. On January 6 the THE CFDT union has announced that it is calling a joint meeting this week with the British and Spanish Peugeot-Talbot unions. Moves are also underway to try to get a meeting of the Talbot international combine committee.

Not only the French government, but also the unions, have talked most about defending France's national industry. The fact, however, is that industry is no longer national. It is interGaullist local council in Poissy, together with the CSL, organised an anti-strike demonstration with obvious racist overBut it's not just the right wing. Both the Socialist Party and the Communist Party argue that there are 'too many' immigrants in France; as well as blocking new immigration from Africa, the left government has also introduced measures to make deportation of 'illegal' immigrants quicker and to deprive them of any right of appeal unless they can pay their fare back from the country they are deported to.

So much for the 'human face". In fact the left government is providing polite and benevolent-sounding frontmen and women for a capitalist state which is as barbaric as ever.

national. The bosses recognise that and organise accordingly. It is time the labour movement did likewise.

What alternative was there to the Peugeot-Talbot bosses' plans? The workers from every part of the multinational should get together and demand to see the bosses' plans and accounts.

Thus armed, they should work out their own plan for the industry, based on sharing the work by cutting the hours without loss of pay. They should demand all the plants are nationalised without compensation, and run under workers' control.

From that basis, they could coordinate action with workers in other car firms and in related industries like steel. The only framework for a restructuring of European industry in the interests of the majority is a Socialist United States of Europe.

A strong socialist campaign for the June Euro-elections, free from the taint of nationalist agitation for withdrawal, could link up well with and give a boost to such moves for international workers' unity. So could even a small militant socialist group in the EEC parliament.