BY KATY LEROUGETEL
PARIS, France - After 33 days on strike, transit workers
in Marseille, the country's second largest city, forced
their employer to abandon two-tier wages and agree to
better working conditions. Early on January 9, unionists
crammed into that city's four transport depots to vote on
the settlement and celebrate their victory.
"We've won, we've won," workers chanted at the La Rose depot. "This is historic," said another worker at the Capelette depot.
The wage difference and longer hours for new hires will be eliminated in two phases: half as of Jan. 1, 1996, and the rest on Jan. 1, 1997. Unionists also won a modest across-the-board wage increase and a monthly bonus of 200 francs ($1=5 francs) for the lowest paid.
No disciplinary measures will be taken against the
strikers.
A manager for the Regional Transit of Marseille (RTM)
fumed to the French business daily Le Figaro, "We've just
gone backwards 15 years. The RTM had begun to operate like
a business. Now we are back to being functionaries."
The company had tried to use police violence to break the strike. Club-wielding riot cops (CRS) brutally attacked 100 striking transit workers in Marseille January 7. André Mattei, a 50-year-old striker handicapped by a recent leg operation, was hospitalized with multiple contusions and a head injury.
"This is outrageous. We're being treated like wrong- doers for the sake of a few eggs [thrown by the strikers]. They used billy clubs shamelessly," said CGT union steward Georges Chahine.
Following a court order issued a few days earlier, hundreds of CRS cops evicted strikers from the four transit depots they had been occupying since December 7.
But these moves failed to break the strike, which nearly crippled bus and tram service in Marseille. Eighty percent of bus drivers remained on strike. Only 20 out of the usual 400 buses ran on January 6. All bus service was suspended after the January 7 assault. Subway lines functioned with heavy police presence.
Hundreds of strikers showed their determination and solidarity in the days after the cop attack, rallying outside disciplinary hearings for co-workers.
After this massive show of solidarity negotiations produced results favorable to the strikers.
Katy LeRougetel is a laid-off garment worker in Montreal, Quebec.