PARIS, April 7 — Launching of a national train strike here today indicated that workers’ fighting spirit is growing. They’re demanding 2,000 new jobs and an end to restructuring. A relatively high number of train drivers and conductors — over one-third — are participating in a renewable 24-hour strike against the national train company.

This indicated that worker militancy may
finally be forcing the union misleaders to organize more than symbolic 24-hour strikes. For decades, workers’ capacity to shut down industries here has been frittered away on “symbolic” strikes.

The strike is limited by the small number of non-train crew workers involved, and respect for the government-imposed minimum service, which has kept 75% of the high-speed trains and 60% of other trains rolling.

When rank-and-file workers take control of a strike, it can be a step in upping the ante of class struggle, which, with the development of communist leadership, could lead to a revolutionary movement to end capitalism with communist revolution. 

Along with 20 other churchgoers, I attended a forum on the effects of the war in Afghanistan on U.S. workers. A teacher described the impact of the war economy on education; a nurse practitioner detailed the effects on medical care; and a lawyer presented the consequences for immigrants. The forum’s moderator leads the congregation’s anti-racist committee.

Nobody was unsympathetic, but many different views were expressed on the war’s effects here. Time limits precluded dealing with the terror and war’s impact on the Afghan people, who identify strongly along tribal lines. However, some serious aspects of imperialism were dealt with.

There were some very dramatic moments. The teacher spoke passionately about how funding cuts are affecting his students, and how programs that traditionally have created a rounded school experience — art, music, vocations, library, sports and clubs — no longer exist in the same way. The only school “club” well-funded and growing is the Junior ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps). The teacher has had many discussions with his students about what imperialism has done to school resources.

The nurse practitioner said sadly that patients are often discharged well before they’re fit to take care of themselves. Because of a great shortage of beds, and due to payment policies to the hospitals by Medicare, Medicaid and insurers, patients often are forced to return to the hospital emergency room for readmission because their ailments not only don’t improve after returning home, but sometimes worsen.

Hospitals are closing — either because of public policy or due to fiscal instability — aggravating the shortage of beds. It’s now accepted practice to house patients in hospital hallways while awaiting a bed.

Because of the bed shortage, families are often pressured to agree to DNR (“Do Not Resuscitate”) orders for loved ones with serious underlying conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Hospital
officials also ask for permission, while the patients are still alive, to harvest their organs. I found this very chilling.

When the nurse practitioner was asked who helps these families take on those within the hospital system who are pressuring for permission on the beloved one not yet dead, she replied, “Only the family defends the patient” — a second chilling moment.

The lawyer related new regulations imposed on immigrants and their families. He described the pressure on immigrants to enlist in the military, with the promise of citizenship. He gave examples of many more restrictions on immigrants, having fewer rights since 9/11.

A lively discussion followed. One participant noted that services have been cut for the past 20 years, well before this war started, although the war has intensified cuts. She said capitalism produced this constant destruction here and abroad. Many others described how capitalism creates other problems, implying this wouldn’t end until capitalism ended.

Some participants suggested what must be done to fight to end the war and to obtain needed services. It was proposed that the church organize a petition and that the congregation itself declare the war morally unacceptable, as well as have the entire denomination take a position opposing it.

This led to other suggestions against the war and the cuts. Many excellent speeches underlined people’s desires not only to learn about the problems, but to do something to change the nature of the society.

Some of these participants receive CHALLENGE regularly. We’re trying to win others to take the paper, and recently won one to join a study group. There’s been a growing understanding of the role of banks, government and the media in keeping people down. We must use this growing knowledge to win people to join PLP. 

LA-SEYNE-SUR-MER, FRANCE, April 10 — The 120 workers at Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) have occupied their factory and are threatening to burn it down if the government does not step in to save their jobs. “We’ve made molotov cocktails and we’ve put highly inflammable materials at the factory gate,” said union steward Eric Mariacci.

“We’re not going to play the fool any more,” added Ryad, a production worker. “If they send in the riot police, we’ll meet them face to face.”

The workers have made bonfires of pallets and tires and dumped thousands of silicone breast implants to block the factory entrance. A thick black smoke envelopes the industrial zone.

“But it isn’t enough to burn breast implants,” said Sabine, another production worker. “We’ve killed ourselves on the job, sometimes ruining our health handling noxious substances. Today we find ourselves without a salary, without benefits, with families to feed and debts on our backs. So,  yes, we’re determined,” he exclaimed.

On March 30, PIP products were ordered withdrawn from the market due to fraudulent raw materials used in their manufacture. The implants are likely to break open, pouring poison into a woman’s breasts. PIP immediately shut down and on March 30 was declared bankrupt by the courts.

The workers are demanding government emergency funds for layoff damages of at least 15,000 euros ($19,000) per worker.

Meanwhile, the union leaders are playing their usual sellout role. “We’re here to calm things down,” emphasized the union’s regional general secretary.

PIP is the world’s third-largest breast implant manufacturer and exports 90% of its production, much of it to the U.S.

In 2003, the company was taken over by the Miami-based Falic Fashion Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Duty Free Americas, the second-largest duty-free goods operator in the U.S. The Group also owns the brand names Perry Ellis Fragrance and Daddy Yankee Fragrance and runs airport duty-free shops in Boston, Chicago and New York as well as stores along the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico.

In 2007 PIP made 13.1 million euros in sales, but sales fell below 10 million euros during the world financial crisis, so the company began offshoring production to China. In France, the graveyard shift was eliminated and temporary workers were laid off.

The PIP case proves once again that the bosses are always ready to risk public health in their drive for maximum profits. When their fraud is discovered, they force the workers to pay the price. Only communist revolution can end this exploitation

LYONS, FRANCE, April 1 — Hundreds of parents of Lyons students fought the threatened deportation of 45-year-old undocumented Angolan immigrant Guilherme Hauka Azanga and forced the government to free him.

Azanga, who has lived in France for eight years, was arrested in front of his family’s four children, one of whom attends Gilbert-Dru elementary school. Shocked parents held a spontaneous demonstration on March 25 at the school. Two days later, in a show of multi-racial, international working-class unity, several hundred marched in downtown Lyons demanding his freedom.

Then, after Azanga was jailed in a detention camp, dozens of parents began occupying the school, staying in relays for ten days. On March 30, over 200 hundred people formed a chain of solidarity in front of the city’s town hall.

Azanga’s partner, an immigrant from the Congo who has residence papers, is ill and if he were to be deported, a school social worker said the children would be placed in a foster home. “Everybody in the neighborhood knows him,” declared Marc Bonny, another pupil’s father. “To deport him would be to destroy his family.”

When Azanga refused in January to board a plane to be deported, he was imprisoned for two months in Lyons’ Corbas jail, a jail he helped build previously as an undocumented worker. The cops then bound and gagged him and took him to the Bourget airport where there were 30 riot police waiting to enforce his deportation. But the pilot of the Air France plane headed to Angola refused to take him aboard. An hour later the cops made another attempt but the pilot refused to even open the plane’s doors.

Given all this and the continuing protest of the parents in Lyons, the immigration official was forced to free him, although with the warning that he was still subject to deportation.

These fascist moves by the Sarkozy government signal its hardening position on undocumented immigrants. It occurs as the strike by 6,000 undocumented workers enters its seventh month (see CHALLENGE, 4/14).

The actions by hundreds of citizens here reflect the solidarity that many feel for the fight of these immigrants to win “legalization.” It exposes the anti-working-class policies of the bosses who create these fraudulent borders which they then use to super-exploit immigrant workers and drag down the conditions for all workers.

That’s why PLP declares, “Smash all borders!”J