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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan.25, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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"We won," was how the workers summed up the agreement between their unions and management. In a 33-day strike, through the Christmas and New Year holidays, they had stayed out and stayed united--paralyzing Marseille, France's second-largest city--until Jan. 10.
"It's historic," they repeated over and over again, with tears of joy running down their cheeks. They sang "The Red Flag" to mark their unanimous vote to accept the agreement that ended the two-tier system imposed on new hires in 1993. New hires used to work 6.5 percent longer for 7.5 percent less money; they had no right to refuse overtime and had other disadvantages.
Under the new contract the new-hire status will be abolished in a year. As a union leader explained, "We, those with seniority, couldn't leave our young members in a status that pushed them back."
The workers also won improvements in automatic raises, a promise of no disciplinary actions and pay for five of the 33 days they were on strike.
It was a tough strike. Workers had to occupy the bus depots and train yards to keep management from bringing in scabs. Then management got an injunction and brought in cops to drive the union out. Even after a number of arrests the union didn't fold, but kept its picket lines and spirit up. The scabs couldn't get the buses rolling after such a long layover and the public didn't trust scab drivers.
After the holidays, a number of other unions in electricity and the post office in the Marseille area started protesting how the agreements that ended the big strike wave of November-December were implemented. Social tensions were rising and the buses weren't rolling. So the mayor of Marseille stepped in and brokered an agreement.
--G. Dunkel
On Dec. 13 Turkish police, army and "anti-terror" units attacked political prisoners in the Umraniye-Prison in Istanbul with automatic weapons, helicopters and gas bombs.
According to the Turkish Platform of Revolutionary Forces in Austria, the attack left one person killed and over 40 prisoners seriously wounded. Prisoners had set up barricades, which succeeded in blunting the attack, and mass pressure forced the troops to pull back.
Then on Jan. 4 the repressive state apparatus struck again. In this second attack, five political prisoners were murdered. Thirty others were critically wounded and were taken to Haydarpasa Hospital.
Turkey's prison system is designed to rob those incarcerated, especially political prisoners, of their identity and dignity. Turkish prison history is one of torture, terror, and repression--and it is also filled with resistance to repression. At the time of the military coup of 1980, there were 100,000 political prisoners in Turkey.
The Turkish Platform of Revolutionary Forces states, "We call upon all revolutionary, progressive and democratic people to support the resistance in Umraniye."
Workers World newspaper has been in solidarity with the struggle of the working class in Turkey and with struggle of the Kurdish people for liberation from Turkish rule and self-determination. Turkish political prisoners regularly translate articles from Workers World and distribute it in the prisons.
Israeli troops detained Hanan Ashrawi and Samir Krish, two Palestinian candidates campaigning in the first elections in the new Palestinian autonomous region, as they tried to enter the city of Jerusalem.
"It is our right to have democratic elections," demanded Ashrawi "This behavior was unacceptable, brutal and illegal."
Ashrawi and Krish are seeking seats in the 88-member autonomy council that is to be chosen on Jan 20. Following years of the Palestinian Intifada, the Israeli state and the Palestine Liberation Organization reached an agreement that allowed limited authority to the Palestinians in areas of the West Bank that Israel had occupied. This council will govern areas under the PLO's limited control.
The Israeli army seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. Palestinians, who number 150,000 in East Jerusalem, consider it the site of a future Palestinian capital.
In Berlin on Jan. 15, some 100,000 people demonstrated in honor of the Communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who the German military assassinated in 1919. The top political leaders of the Party for Democratic Socialism, the successor party to the party that ruled the German Democratic Republic, were at the head of the demonstration. Some of the groups at the demonstration clashed with police.
--Kristianna Tho'mas
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