Government decided on a derisory increase of 2% at the beginning of this year, and another increase at the end of 1963 which would have brought wages up @ total of 5.77 % Why such an attitude on the part of the Government ? If one disregards the traditional red tape (and this has played a certain role), the main reason is that the Goverrment wants to hold down inflation, setting an example by limiting wages. It also appears that at the end of February, the Government like the Unions themselves, had no clear idea what the reaction of the miners might be towards the limited increases that were granted. The CGT (General Confederation of Workers). to which most of the miners belong, did not call for more than a two-day work stoppage before taking a definitive decision. The other unions, the FO (Workers' Force), and the CPTC ( French Confederation of Christian Workers), called for an unlimited strike. But the Government happened to give an impulse to the struggle as well as a political tone to it by deciding to "requisition" the miners; in other words to mobilise the miners on the job and force them to work like soldiers. In this way the Government dealt a blow st the right to strike.
It was not the first time the Government had acted in this ways However, up to now it has issued such an order only to small groups of workers (a couple of hundred or so) and the unions limited themsleves to issuing some timid protests. Requisitioning the miners was a little too biga bite to swallow in this way. The first to go out on strike against the requsition were the miners of the lorraine basin, which is second in importance among the coalfields, and where the Government could formerly have counted on a certain reponse. The Labour movement is weakest in the Lorraine basin. In the referendum last October and in the elections in November, de Gaulle got an 80 % "yes" vote in the Lorraine and can ~didates of the de Gaullist UNR ( Union for the New Republic) displaced the former office holders belonging to the wp (Popular * For footnote see over.
1513 ae eoeseeRCpudlicah Movement)» Once the Lorraine Basin went on strike “success was then assured in the Nord and Pas. dae Calais areas, where Communists and Socialists are dominant, . and where in the elections of last November they aided each others . On the llth day of the strike, the movment is continuing without sign of weakness. The only men going down the mines are the security teams which the strikers themselves organised to see that no damage occurs below while the pickets watch the gates above. Through Prime Minister Pompidou, the Government vainly. pleaded with the~miners ina "fireside chat" March 9th over the radio and television to go back to work. Squads of the CRS ( the French gendarmerie) have been sent into the strike regions, but they are being discrectly kept in their barracks for the time being.
It is the first big workers strugzle since de Gdulle came to power in 1958. It also -happens.to be a struggle against the ‘ Government—as—Boss. It is ppintless to debate whether the Government made an error, as a big sector of the press believes, in going as far as a "requisition" by a decree made out at Colmbey-les-deux- Eglises (de Gaulle's home) and sisned by the Ger@al himself. Error or not, the government power, after having put an end to the war in Algeria (and to do this it had to turn primarily against the extreme Right in France), naturally inclines now to turn against the workers, It is now committed to its requisition decree, and it is invoking the authority of the state; that is demanding a return to work before considering any new negotiations on wageSe It is quite probable that at the present moment, the Government is not so michpreoOccupied over upping wages an additional small percentage as over the problem of enforcing the requisitbn order. The miners in France have a story of long and militant, if rare, strikes. The last big strike was one in 1947,notable for its battles with the CRS... After it was lost,