Guinean workers win demands

The workers of Guinea suspended their general strike March 1 and went back to work.

Rabiatou Serah Diallo, leader of the National Confederation of Guinea Workers (left) and Ibrahima Fofana, leader of UST Syndical Union, at the Guinean assembly in Conakry Feb. 25.

The union coalition coordinating the strike told Agence-France Press that they would definitively end it if they approved of the composition of the new government, if the bosses paid workers for the days that the workers were out on strike and if the government released all the people rounded up during January and February at protests and demonstrations.

The strike was political. Its main demand was for the president of Guinea, Lansana Conté, to step down. The strikers also wanted the endemic corruption and thievery of public funds ended and the price of gasoline and basic necessities reduced.

While the unions coordinated and led, these strikes were really part of a mass movement against the government with tens of thousands of unemployed youth in the “popular,” that is, predominantly poor and impoverished, suburbs marching and protesting.

They stayed in the streets, coming out again and again, even though the army and the cops killed over 150 protesters and wounded hundreds more. Even interviewed on their hospital beds by French television, these youths expressed their determination to keep on struggling to force Conté out of power. That was a necessary step, they stated, for a better future for themselves and their families.

“Beggars” and market women—the street sellers who handle most of the retail businesses in West Africa—expressed solidarity with the strike.

Conté’s decision to step down as head of the government, while remaining head of state, satisfied the unions’ demand. New Prime Minister Lansana Kouyaté has had a diplomatic career, working for the U.N. in New York and West Africa.

He has French support, since French Minister for Cooperation Brigitte Girardin dropped by Conakry, the capital of Guinea, on March 2—the day after Kouyaté became prime minister—and gave him a check for 100,000 euros to care for the hundreds injured in the protests.

It became clear that Conté was going to be forced to back down when the Guinean parliament voted Feb. 24 to end the state of siege he had imposed two weeks earlier. Conté was also having problems with the army. The higher officers still supported him, but he had lost so much support among the young officers and the enlisted men that he locked up the ammunition for their weapons, according to Cheikh Yérim Seck in the Feb. 18 Jeune Afrique. Aminata.com, a web-based news service in Guinea, reported March 4 that many lower ranking soldiers were upset with their pay and living conditions.

Conté’s only reliable contingents were some mercenary Red Berets from neighboring Liberia and the presidential guard. But as harsh and violent as they were, these forces couldn’t crush the resistance.

Since Guinea produces more than half the world’s bauxite, as well as significant quantities of iron ore, gold and diamonds, the strikes had a worldwide economic impact. (Bauxite is the main component of aluminum.)

Even though a majority of Guineans are desperately poor, living on less than $2 a day, and desperately want steady work, they looked on the job actions that the unionized workers took as defending their interests, economic as well as political. There is no valid reason why a country like Guinea with such vast and well developed material resources is so impoverished, although neocolonialism and its by-product, corruption, are important factors.

It is clear that if the workers and people of Guinea do not see a sharp and quick improvement in their living standards, they will continue the struggles they have waged for the last 12 months. For more information on this development, go to www.workers.org.