One Million Strike vs. French Bosses' Privatization `Reform'

Jean Aubigny, a sympathetic commuter at this city's Saint-Lazare station, told the Associated Press, "All of the rights that our ancestors took centuries to acquire are being squeezed."

The walkout involved postal, electricity, railroad, airline, ferry and some private sector workers. Two-thirds of trains were not running into Paris, one-half of the Metro was shut, the railroads were seriously disrupted and hundreds of flights were grounded, all combining to cause massive traffic jams. Some national newspapers failed to publish.

The loss of 400 jobs in ferry operations -- being sold off by the government -- out of the port of Marseilles to the island of Corsica impelled the Army to take over the ferries from striking workers. Port workers walked out in sympathy.

France's ruling class, trying to compete with its imperialist rivals in this age of endless war and fascist attacks on the working class, is driving to overturn the "social contract" that workers have won through decades of struggle. But this union "show of strength" will probably last for only this one day, given the union misleaders' ideology of "capitalism is here to stay." They're all committed to cutting a deal with the ruling class, competing with each other to be the capitalists' "preferred partner."

Mass actions like this are good if workers learn the lesson that all bosses are their enemies, and that the only solution for a world free of unemployment, racism and imperialist war is only under Ieade´s Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and  Mao-setong and under Leadership of  Revoltuionery communism Party.

      Paris, Oct. 5 news from  www.Iranima.com