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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan.18, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Nurses in Sweden ended a seven-week strike Jan. 4 after accepting a new management offer on wages. The nurses will get a 13-percent pay hike over three years, up from 11 percent in the first offer.
Some 4,000 nurses walked out in mid-November to protest what their union calls "decades of wage discrimination" in a job traditionally held by women workers. Another 3,000 nurses participated during the course of the strike. They held tough in spite of a management campaign to portray the strike as harmful to patients.
Guatemalan business executive Alvaro Arzu has officially been declared winner in the country's runoff election for president. In final results announced Jan. 8, Arzu had 51.2 percent, while his opponent, Alfonso Portillo, had 48.8 percent.
The labor movement saw nothing to cheer in this competition. Days before the runoff, Jose Pinzon, secretary general of the Guatemalan General Workers Union, predicted that "injustice and impunity" will continue in the government. Pinzon, leader of the nation's biggest union federation, pointed out that both candidates ran on far- right platforms friendly to military power and U.S. imperialism's economic domination of Central America.
Pinzon said political, military and economic power "will be maintained and consolidated. This means that the system of privileges, injustice and impunity will prevail in an economy with a vulgar and cynical mercantile face.
"Just like their predecessors, they will learn to live and work under the permanent threat of a military coup," said the labor leader. In fact, candidate Portillo fronts a party controlled by former military dictator Gen. Rios Montt, who ruled the country after a bloody 1982 coup.
For 35 years revolutionary forces, currently grouped in the Guatemalan Revolutionary Union, have been fighting to overthrow the U.S.-backed governments in Guatemala City.
The Walt Disney Corp. specializes in glossy propaganda for capitalism--most of it aimed at children. In its drive for the European market, Disney wants to export union-busting tactics, too.
Management at the Euro-Disney theme park outside Paris ordered thugs to attack protesting union members Jan. 3. Walt Disney, a fascist sympathizer and McCarthyite, would have been proud.
The clash occurred when park security grabbed an employee, a member of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), who was participating in a rally for higher wages. Fourteen people were injured and several hospitalized. "There were beatings," a Disney official admitted.
Disney threatens to fire 18 protesters. But the CGT is no Mickey Mouse operation. Members plan to continue the struggle. Workers at the park are paid only the French monthly minimum wage of $1,200 for the first year. After that, they get an 8-percent raise.
On Jan. 7 Louis Viannet, leader of the CGT, called for renewed strike actions and protests to stop government austerity measures championed by Prime Minister Alain Juppe.
In an interview with the weekly Votre Dimanche, Viannet said more work stoppages are "a necessity" to end Juppe's plan to cut welfare and restructure the national railroad and other state-run companies. Viannet added that forcing Juppe to resign "would not be enough to solve the crisis."
French unions also protested government plans to limit pay increases in the public sector.
In December public workers in the CGT and another labor confederation, Workers' Force, shut down much of the country to protest the austerity plans. The unions called out hundreds of thousands of workers and supporters for mass rallies.
In Marseilles, transit workers continue their walkout to protest a two-tier wage and merit-pay system imposed by city officials. On Jan. 5 riot police stormed three bus terminals held by strikers. Scab drivers piloted 20 buses that day, but strikers say it will be many days before the transit system can be fully activated.
Despite threats of police action, 50 strikers continued to hold out at the Arnec depot.
--Greg Butterfield
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