Vol. 73/No. 7      February 23, 2009

The Guadeloupe strike has been led by a coalition of 47 trade unions and other organizations called LKP, the Creole acronym for Collective Against Outrageous Exploitation. The LKP has demanded an increase in salaries, a freeze on rents, reduction of taxes and food prices, and a 50-cent cut in the price of a liter of fuel.

Yves Jégo, France’s secretary of state for overseas territories, was dispatched to the island February 2 to conduct negotiations aimed at settling the strikes. He departed the island a week later after reaching a tentative agreement to raise some salaries, which later broke down.

LKP leader Elie Domota described Jégo’s abrupt return to Paris, without informing the LKP, “the most total contempt,” reported the Caribbean Net News. Thousands demonstrated against Jégo February 9 and strikes closed service stations and the container terminal at the port of Pointe-a-Pitre. Protests also took place in Martinique. Paris announced February 10 it was sending two mediators to the island to negotiate once again.

The strikes in Guadeloupe come in the midst of growing protests in France against the rising cost of living there. More than 1 million people took to the streets across France January 26.

—Sam Manuel

Stockholm sanitation workers
win two-day strike
STOCKHOLM, Sweden—Sanitation workers returned to work here February 10 after a two-day strike. Workers say the company, Liselott Lööf AB, has tentatively agreed to their demands and negotiations now begin on a contract. The company has also agreed to drop its lawsuit against the workers and will pay them for the two days they were on strike. Company spokesman Hans Göran Grännby says Liselott Lööf AB has not made any promises and has only agreed to start negotiations.

Some 66 garbage trucks and their crews gathered at the Högdalen central refuse disposal plant February 6 as the workers went on strike. Workers Berra Ramquist and Mats Björnberg told the Militant that they could not accept the attempt by the company to lower wages by 20 to 30 percent, while increasing the workload by the same amount.

“We will strike as long as it takes to stop this,” Ramquist said to the main Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter.

Grännby had said that the concessions were necessary to get a new contract with the local government. He said that other groups, such as the airline pilots, had accepted lower wages. He demanded that workers return to work or face firing.

The workers have been fighting the company’s plans for a long time. Last May Day garbage collectors drove their trucks in a caravan into the center of Stockholm.

—Dag Tirsén  
 
 
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