BY DEREK JEFFERS
PARIS - With 40 percent of all service stations out of gas, half of the country's 175 gas storage depots blockaded by striking truck drivers, and up to 191 barriers in place on roads around France, government officials, trucking bosses, and some union leaders rushed to conclude an agreement on November 7 to end the five-day strike. The agreement included an increase in the minimum wages guaranteed for drivers over the next three years. Many strikers were angered by the accord, however, believing they could have fought for more.

Despite the serious inconveniences it often caused, no one could contest the popularity of the truckers strike among workers. "They're right, they're making things change," said 47-year-old GEC-Alsthom coil winder Michel Heimann in Saint Ouen.

The truckers launched their strike November 2 despite the fact that the unions had reached an agreement that same morning with one of the bosses' organizations. The main bosses' organization, the Union of Transportation Federations (UFT), at first refused to accept this initial agreement, leaving the negotiating table November 1. The rapid extension of the road blockades forced the bosses to resume talks November 5, resulting in the November 7 accord.

Wage raises, but with loopholes
The new agreement provides for an immediate increase of between 3 and 5 percent of the minimum wages guaranteed for drivers. For the highest-paid category of long-distance drivers, the increase is 6 percent, with another 15 percent in raises by July 1, 2000, bringing the minimum to $1,740 for 200 hours work per month. This top pay affects between 10,000 and 15,000 of the 220,000 drivers in France. The most highly qualified trucking workers who are not drivers will see their minimum guaranteed wage go up proportionally, from $1,221 to $1,415 a month for 169 hours, which corresponds to a 39-hour workweek.

For the truckers who belong to neither of these two categories, nothing is defined in the agreement beyond the immediate 3-5 percent wage hike. The deal includes a onetime payment of $522 to most strikers, which had been part of the settlement of a 12-day truckers strike last year, but was only paid to 10 percent of the drivers.

Other aspects of the agreement limit the wage increases it codifies. While raising the guaranteed minimum for some long-distance drivers to $1,740 per month in the year 2000, the agreement leaves open the possibility of bosses canceling yearly bonuses, such as a 13th month of wages paid by many companies. Also, the previous guaranteed minimum levels for the lowest-paid workers were below the national minimum wage ($1165 a month). These workers could not legally be paid less than minimum wage, so the 3 - 5 percent increases in the industry minimum will merely bring them up officially to what they were already being paid.

"We are terribly disappointed," said Francois Pougetoux, a General Confederation of Labor (CGT) delegate at the Rungis logistics platform blockade south of Paris, where 180 companies have their distribution centers. None of the 13 other drivers there disagreed.

Thirty-year-old Michel Maillard said that the Rungis strikers would gain only $35 per month. "They're not respecting the drivers," he said. "The bosses are laughing at us."

Near a blockade close to Rouen, some members of the French Confederation of Democratic Labor (CFDT), the only truckers union to sign the November 7 agreement, burned their union cards. According to the Sunday national paper Journal du Dimanche, Yves, a CFDT delegate explaining the national agreement said, "I'm disgusted. They're so rotten! I don't understand what is happening."

The CFDT claimed that 61 percent of its members had voted in favor of the agreement after it was submitted to them in the morning of November 7, before the CFDT signed it in Paris at 4 :45 PM the same day. The legalistic text was 15 pages long.

Yvon Connan, delegate of the independent union, the National Federation of Truck Drivers (FNCR) at Rungis, told the Militant, "It wasn't absolutely necessary to sign this agreement right away - we're still a long ways from what we wanted. There is a calendar of wage increases. There are positive things, even if not everyone is affected. Now it's up to us, the union delegates, to make sure the agreement is respected at the local level, to use the positive side. The term of `driver' has to win more respect. That's linked to the question of wages."

While the CFDT - the union with the largest following among truckers - signed the accord, none of the four other truckers unions did so. The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) announced that it had consulted truckers at 104 blockades, and that 80 percent of them were against the agreement. Although Workers Force (FO) had participated in the negotiation of a previous, similar agreement just before the strike began November 2, it denounced the new accord, stating, "Between Sunday and today, we haven't gotten a penny more. The guys were led to strike for nothing."

Under French labor law, the signature of one union, especially the largest one in an industry, is sufficient for an agreement to be considered valid. The dismantling of some blockades under the pressure of the CFDT, and the lack of any perceived alternative, truckers quickly resigned themselves to lifting the barriers. All were down within 24 hours after the signing of the agreement.

The national secretary of the French Communist Party, Robert Hue, drew a positive balance sheet of the negotiations, speaking of a "significant step forward." He hailed "the new method of the [Socialist Party-led] government, and particularly my friend Jean-Claude Gayssot." Transportation Minister Gayssot is a CP leader, and played a major role in negotiating the agreement. Gaullist president Jacques Chirac also praised the government for having "done as much as possible" to end the strike.

"Today this isn't a strike anymore, it's an insurrection," lamented right-wing politician Alain Madelin.

`The bosses were scared'
Some strikers also experienced employer-organized violence against them. The worst incident was at a blockade in Vitrolles, near Marseilles, where a commando unit sent by one of the blockaded trucking companies, European Refrigeration Transportation (TFE), attacked the strikers at 4 a.m., sending three of them to the hospital. Police arrested five of the commandos. Truckers reacted later in the day by setting up blockades outside TFE centers in four cities in France. The mayor of Vitrolles, Catherine Megret, belongs to the fascist National Front. The political bureau of the National Front issued a statement during the strike condemning "the illegal methods used by the truck drivers unions, which can ruin our already sick economy." It said it was "scandalous" that the state watches "the unions engage in illegal actions without reacting."

At the Rungis blockade on November 7, as the strikers prepared to lift their barricade, Maillard grinned, "Anyway, the bosses did get scared that our action could snowball to other workers." Francois Pougetoux added in almost a whisper, his voice hoarse from five days at the blockade, "The movement has won us some respect and for us the struggle is not over."

After lifting their blockade, the strikers at Rungis shifted their action to the company they work for, Via Location, at Orly next door. They parked 17 trucks in front of the company's offices, pressing forward locally for their for wage increase demands.

Derek Jeffers is a member of the CGT at the GEC-Alsthom transformer plant in Saint Ouen.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home