Militancy among Black workers has been simmering for weeks. Dock workers, bus drivers, brickworkers, and building laborers had recently struck in Capetown, Johannesburg, and Pretoria.

"Meanwhile," the Feb. 4 New York Times reported, "other workers - mostly Zulus, men, women, and some Asians - began to walk off the job in textile factories, engineering workshops and other industrial plants. One was the city's biggest bakery. Others affected by stoppages included the Pepsi-Cola bottling company and some of the city's luxury hotels." By Feb. 4 the strikes had affected "100 Durban concerns and involved possibly 50,000 workers." The workers' main demands centered on wage increases.

February 23, 1948
Last week a strike wave hit "prosperous" little Belgium. Several hundred thousand miners, textile workers, postmen, and gas and electrical workers walked out successively demanding a cost-of-living bonus and wage increases. The government threatened to call out troops and ordered a "civil mobilization" or labor draft for strikers.

Belgium has been played up as the pot of the "free enterprise" system in Europe by Wall Street spokesmen. It was supposed to be an oasis of prosperity on the continent. Its capitalists have been especially favored with American loans since the end of the war. The Belgian strike wave is thus a preview of Europe after the Marshall Plan. American loans have not been able to solve the problems of inflation there any more than anywhere else; the workers are forced to strike in order to get wage increases to meet rising costs.

The official leadership condemns the strikes. Yet there is a strike wave, "wild cat" though it is.  
 
 
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