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    Vol.60/No.45           December 16, 1996 
 
 
Truckers Tie Up France, Win Gains  

BY NAT LONDON AND CLAUDE BLETON

PARIS - As dawn rose November 29, the 12th day of a nation-wide action of truck drivers, 250 truck barricades were still holding firm throughout the country. By day's end, it became clear that a victory had been won and thousands of truckers started on the road home.

The drivers won retirement at age 55 instead of at 60 years and agreement from the government that their unpaid time loading, unloading, and waiting at the loading docks would be recognized as paid work time. The agreement also says the government will take measures to reduce the drivers' weekly work time, and cut from 10 to 5 the number of days before sick leave is fully paid.

Before the strike ended, some of the truck barriers set up on major highways had swollen to as many as 5,000 vehicles, including strikers, non-strikers, and truckers from other countries. Unlike previous truckers actions, this time the strikers were salaried drivers rather than independent owner-operators.

All 13 French oil refineries and half of the 400 gas storage depots were blocked by masses of semi-trailers, buses, and private cars, forcing the closure of half of Francés 18,000 gas stations. Half of the country, including major cities such as Bordeaux and Marseille, was without gas.

Peugeot cut production at its auto assembly plants in Poissy and Sochaux. Renault's assembly plants in Meubeuge, Sandouville, and Douai shut down. The Douai plant's gates were barricaded by the truck drivers.

The effects of the strike, which started November 18, spread rapidly to other countries. All major border crossings from France to Belgium and Germany were blocked. The ports with ferry service to Britain were barricaded as well. Truckers fight worsening conditions
Truck drivers in France have been protesting a steep decline in their wages and working conditions. Many drivers now work a 70-hour week for minimum wage, about $1,000 a month. Much of their time -loading, unloading, and waiting for new shipments - has not been counted as work time.

A wave of support for the drivers' action swept the country. One poll showed 87 percent considered the drivers' demands justified, and 74 percent were personally in solidarity with the strike.

After six days, the government named a mediator to organize negotiations. With the truckers' action beginning to spread rapidly throughout the country, the bosses conceded one of the truckers' main demands - reducing the retirement age to 55 years after 25 years on the road. Previously, 40 years of work was necessary in order to retire at age 60.

The government will finance a large part of the cost and retired drivers will receive over 75 percent of their salary. According to the agreement, one young worker will be hired to replace each retiree.

In August 1993, the government raised the number of years of work necessary before retirement for workers in the private sector from 37.5 to 40. Retirement is at age 60 in the private sector.

Last year, Premier Alain Juppé tried to raise the retirement age for all public workers to 60 years after having worked for 40 years. This measure, touching 5.5 million workers, was pushed back by the November-December strike wave. As a result, railroad conductors and Paris bus drivers still retire at age 50 while many other public workers retire at 55. Other civil servants who retire at 60 years only need 37.5 years of work for full retirement benefits. Discussions on the barricade
"I never really believed that this could happen," said Marc Guillot, a bus driver in the Paris suburb of Creteil, at a truck barricade November 27. "I'm a union member and I thought that if we don't act now no one else will. So one day I drove my bus off its regular route and parked it here. Then I went looking for a telephone, called my union, Force Ouvriere, and said get some truckers here to help."

That was three days earlier, and Guillot's bus was still there, parked diagonally across the entrance ramp to Creteil's industrial zone. Twenty tractor trailers had joined him and were parked in a zig-zag pattern behind the bus. Inside the zone was the largest mail sorting center in France, now idle.

The truckers came from all over France. One was from Chambéry in the French Alps. They had built a fire and lean-to, but as night fell, we all went into the bus to warm up. Guillot's wife and four kids were living in the bus now and they prepared coffee for the cold and tired truckers. A couple of railroad workers were there, as well as a few workers from the nearby Renault plant. Later, a Paris bus driver came in to join the group.

The truckers in Guillot's bus said that they should continue the struggle in spite of the announcement earlier that day that they had won retirement at age 55. They insisted that all their time on the road, including loading and unloading, be counted as work time and paid accordingly. This was the only way they could get an actual reduction in their working hours as well as a pay raise.

A union representative came by to report that the number of truck barriers had risen from 210 to 250 during the course of the day, 1,800 gas stations were about to close, and truckers in Denmark were in the second day of a strike, blocking the border crossings into Germany. They had sent a solidarity message to the striking French drivers.

A few kilometers down the road, 100 drivers were huddled around an open fire, their rigs blocking the exit to the logistics platform of the Rungis wholesale commercial market. Almost all of Paris' food passes through the market, which is linked to the platform by a small bridge. The truckers allowed cars to go into the logistics platform where 1,500 people work. But no trucks were allowed in or out. The market itself was still functioning.

Some of the drivers were discussing their relations with drivers from other countries, thousands of whom were caught up in the truck barriers, often knowing little French and not understanding what the strike was about. In a few cases, violent incidents took place. One such incident in Alsace left a German driver in a coma.

The press tried to whip up sentiment against the strike by claiming that the "foreign truckers" were being held hostage by the strikers. Finally, some of the truck barricades had decided to let the drivers from other countries leave.

The barricade at Rungis was quite international. Among the hundred truckers around the fire were drivers from Portugal, Spain, Germany, Belgium and even Finland. "The drivers from Britain left yesterday," the truckers told Militant reporters.

Unions are very weak among the 350,000 truck drivers. The largest union, the French Confederation of Democratic Labor (CFDT), only gets 18 percent of the vote in shop committee elections. Two other unions, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and Workers' Force (FO), receive 11.5 percent and 11 percent respectively. Almost half the truckers vote for non-union candidates.

At one point, Nicole Notat, the General Secretary of the CFDT, threatened to launch a "march on Paris," urging truckers to leave their barricades and blockade the French capital. This met with no success among the drivers, who preferred to reinforce the truck barriers. They instead decided to block the oil refineries and gas distribution centers, thus threatening to bring the entire French economy to a halt.

In 1992, the French government broke a truckers action that tried to blockade Paris. They used tanks and other military vehicles to tow away the offending tractor trailers.

The CGT called for a November 27 "National Day of Action" to support the truckers. Notat of the CFDT publicly criticized the action, saying that workers should avoid solidarity strikes.

Railroad workers at the Sotteville rail depot near Rouen, one of the strong points of last year's rail strike, tried to organize a solidarity strike for the National Day of Action. While their call was only followed by a minority of the rail workers, it disrupted rail service between Rouen, Le Havre and Paris. A rail and public transportation strike also took place at Nantes.

More typical of the CGT'S "National Day of Action" was the rally of some 200 CGT shop stewards at the Rungis truckers barricade.

At the nearby Renault auto plant at Choisy-le-roi, workers from the plant have been stopping off at the barricades on their own, bringing coffee and encouragement. Those who have been to the barricades are surrounded by fellow workers the next day and bombarded with questions about the progress of the struggle and the truckers continued determination. There was no meeting or even leaflets distributed at the plant about the CGT's Day of Action.

Once it became clear that the drivers would not end their strike even after having won retirement at age 55, the government was forced to announce that it would pass a decree within two weeks to recognize loading and unloading time as fully paid work time.

The last demand made by the truckers - a pay increase averaging 23 percent - has not been satisfied. The bosses have proposed 1 percent and a year-end bonus.

Although no one has yet seen the government's decree on work time, most drivers said that the strike had gone far enough that the decree would in fact satisfy this demand. And recognizing dock time as paid work time would mean a substantial raise for most drivers and facilitate efforts to limit the total amount of time worked in a week.

This victory is one of several won by workers in France since 1993. These fights against the employers and government austerity drive include the strike at Air France in 1993, the defeat of the government's sub-minimum youth wage in 1994, and the strike wave in 1995.

The bosses and the government are getting nervous about pushing through the austerity package they need to carry out. In the middle of the strike, former French President Valery Giscard D'Estaing made an open call for a first-time devaluation of the franc in relation to the German mark and a devaluation of the future European currency in relation to the dollar. Paris has kept the franc high and attempted to make social cuts to lower the budget deficit in order to enter the European Monetary Union on par with Bonn.

Following Giscard's remarks, French president Jacques Chirac assured German chancellor Helmut Kohl of "the French position on the stability between the franc and the mark."

The strike has had a deep effect on workers as well. For 36 year old Jean-Claude Fernandez, with 15 years seniority at the GEC-Alsthom plant in the Paris suburb of St. Ouen, said "it's about time that the truckers acted. This is a struggle we can all use in the future."

As the truckers took down their barricades, France Info, the national news radio network, announced that bus drivers in Nice had just gone on strike to lower their retirement age to 55, "like the truckers."

 
 
 
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