------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 23, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
MORE FRENCH WORKERS STRIKE OVER RETIREMENT
On June 3 new layers of French workers joined the struggle started by public employees against reforms proposed by the government that would add years to the retirment age and cut pensions. Workers from the private sector--steel, chemicals, trucking, even retail--struck and marched.
Some 250,000 workers marched in Paris and 250,000 in Marseilles, France's second-largest city. One million marched elsewhere in France, in small and large cities, before government offices, corporate headquarters, city halls and train stations. Some 80 percent of air flights were canceled as well as a majority of inter-city trains. Some mass transit in the larger cities ran, but most did not.
Teachers and school staff came out in large numbers over the issue of retirement and also the government's plan to restructure education, even though the government now says it is going to postpone until the fall any parliamentary action on its plan to restructure education.
Some 500,000 workers in Austria held a one-day general strike in solidarity with the French workers and because they face the same issue of retirement changes. There were major demonstrations in Italy and 90,000 steel workers in eastern Germany also went out for equal wages with their western colleagues.
European workers say that joint actions in a spirit of solidarity give them additional strength. --G. Dunkel
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