BY LINDA HARRIS
SYDNEY, Australia - A week-long general strike shook Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, in mid-July. Union activists paralyzed industry, costing the government and employers billions of Pacific francs. The international airport was closed for several days. Workers blocked traffic with barricades.
The July 17-24 strike was led by the Kanak and Exploited Workers Union (USTKE), which is a pro-independence union whose members are predominantly Kanak, the indigenous people of New Caledonia.
The action began as a one-day national strike in protest of the sacking of five workers by Jama Medical, a local medical center. Unionists broadened the fight to demand legislation to protect workers' rights. They demanded measures that exist in France but not in New Caledonia, which is a French colony.
Kotra Uregei, the president of the USTKE, said at a rally on July 18 that it was "time to mobilize our militants." The strike was supported by Kanak working people from around the country.
More than 1,000 unionists defended barricades and held off police for five days in Ducos, the industrial center of Noumea. Riot police, backed by armored cars used tear gas to try to disperse strikers. The police attack left 15 people injured. Gendarmes were flown back from Tahiti where they had been mobilized two weeks prior to the strike against antinuclear protesters who had blockaded Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, another colony.
On July 24 the strike ended when union leaders and the French High Commission reached an accord, forcing the company to agree to make severance payments to the sacked workers and setting up a working group to examine labor rights legislation.
The general strike, the biggest mass protest action in almost 10 years in New Caledonia, also highlighted the issues of independence and opposition to nuclear testing. The action took place in the context of the reelection in recent provincial voting of the Rally for New Caledonia in the Republic (RPCR) a right-wing, pro-colonialist party led by Jacques Lafleur. A referendum on independence is to take place in 1998. A protest rally against the French government's decision to resume nuclear tests at Moruroa had been held on July 1 in Noumea.
Linda Harris is a member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union.