BY ROLLANDE GIRARD AND JONATHAN SILBERMAN
CAEN, France - Striking workers at the postal sorting office here voted overwhelmingly Friday, December 29, to end their four-week strike and return to work. Applause and chants of "Tous ensemble!" (All together!) - the slogan which has become identified with the mass movement against the Juppé government's austerity plan - greeted the vote. "We haven't won all our demands," said striker Roger Chapuis, one of a majority in the plant who is not a member of any of the trade unions, "but we're not returning with our heads bowed."
For most of the strike the 250 workers had occupied the sorting office, but in the early morning hours December 28, 100 militarized police removed the strikers and took out the mail that had built up.
The police action generated broad opposition. An impromptu demonstration headed by the strikers won support from local rail and hospital workers. The occupation had been popular among working people throughout this mainly agricultural region of northwestern France. Weekly collections were organized by, among others, machinists at Moulinex, auto workers at Citroen, and rail and hospital workers. Forty thousand francs (5 francs=US$1) had been donated to the strike fund. A demonstration of 300 farmers protested the disruption of the mail, calling on Mme. Bernard, regional director of the government-owned sorting company, to accede to the strikers' demands.
The occupation-strike in Caen started as part of the mass social movement that mushroomed across France in early December.
The movement, which brought millions into action on the streets, was focused on the government's attempt to slash social spending. Many groups of workers who took strike action against Prime Minister Alain Juppé's austerity plan added their own demands. At the Caen Centre de Tri, strikers demanded an end to a divisive hiring policy which the company has stepped up in recent years. Since 1994 new starts have been employed on a casual basis. They have no guaranteed hours or even work at all, are on permanent call, and receive inferior wages and conditions.
The main strike demand was that 15 such précaire workers be given full-time contracts on the same basis as everyone else. "For many the future is no future - we have to stop that" said striker Jean-Claude Lion, a member of one of the unions. "As long as the company is able to maintain such divisions, we are weaker," said Gérard Lejoin.
Many of the strikers said they thought the French government and employers intended to inflict the same sort of blows dealt over the past 10 years to working people in the United Kingdom. "Bernard = Thatcher" was plastered all over the walls of the Centre de Tri. Tens of thousands demonstrated in Caen on December 19, the biggest such action locally since the general strike movement of 1968, when the Caen Centre de Tri was also occupied by the workers.
Since then there have been three more occupations - in 1974, 1984, and 1995. Workers spoke of their determination to prevent the company from succeeding in its attempts to erode conditions established by past battles. "The future will be what we make of it. All together" was painted on the wall.
The agreement negotiated by the union leaders and accepted by the mass meeting provides for the gradual integration of the précaires onto full-time contracts over the next three months on condition that the volume of work holds up. The company agreed to pay the strikers for one-third of the strike days and to spread the lost wages over the next year.