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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 11, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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55,000 Workers Protest At Lyon Summit

By G. Dunkel

In what the French daily newspaper Liberation called a "monster demonstration," 55,000 workers from across Europe marched through Lyon, France June 25 to protest the G7 meetings that began the next day.

The G7 countries are the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Canada. The heads of government of these world powers have met at a summit once a year for the past 22 years. They discuss how to maintain their joint control of the world's economy.

Since the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, these countries' governments have taken major steps to reduce the living standards and wage levels of workers at home. In Europe especially this has attracted opposition from a combative and organized working class, which has fought these cuts.

The Lyon demonstrator's demands were straightforward: no cuts, jobs and full employment through 32 hours work for 40 hours pay, and a decent standard of living for all workers wherever they live.

The lead banner read in French: "In solidarity for full employment throughout the world." Others read "G7 means worldwide misery;" "32 hours work for 40 hours pay;" others pointed out that with what France spends on its military budget everyone in the country could have a job.

At the concluding rally, representatives from the foreign delegations--Spain, Italy, India and Brazil--spoke along with leaders of the French unions--like the CGT and FSU, which had called the demonstration.

CGT leader Louis Viannet said: "The meeting of the heads of state of the seven richest countries of the world is a good time to raise our demands up high. ... In all the countries of this planet, the inexorable law of profit is raging. ... It is more than ever urgent for all the trade unions, of France, of Europe, of the whole world to hold up their heads and call on their workers ... so that human needs are placed in the center of development."

Jordi Ribo, a leader of the Catalan Trade Unions in Spain, said: "The common government policies of the G7 attack the rights of workers, government budgets, public services and any institution that protects the public. The widest possible unity of workers both in Europe and worldwide is today indispensable."

M.K. Pandhe--secretary general of the Confederation of Indian Trade Unions, which has 3 million members--said, "In India, through the programs of structural adjustments, we have experienced a strong penetration of foreign capital. Numerous Indian enterprises have gone bankrupt, particularly in the sectors of the economy turned over to multinationals. As privatization takes hold, unemployment grows."

Workers from Germany weren't at the Lyon demonstration. Instead, two days later, on June 27, hundreds of thousands of workers all over Germany held job actions, car caravans, picket lines and brief strikes to protest the passage of legislation reducing their sick pay and making it easier to fire workers in small companies.

An Alternative Summit was held in Lyon by some 50 nongovernmental organizations during the G7 meeting, Jose Dorceu, head of the Workers Party of Brazil, said: "The policy of Washington and of the G7, which we call neoliberal, has produced serious unemployment in Brazil, a dismemberment of social services, which were already weak, a privatization of social security and of the public health system, and an increase in the number of homeless.

"It has also produced attacks against unions, the right to strike, and made employment much more precarious." He continued, "Popular struggles have put agrarian reform, job creation and revenue sharing on the order of the day.''

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