an isolated one; there were others. Although these strikes were repressed (they were short-term strikes, lasting for a maximum of one day, with only a section of the workers parficipating in them), they did serve os a warning. Practically nothing is left of the government's original intention to diminish wages by about 5 percent. The case of a section of the CKD factory in Prague, where the introduction of the new wage system resulted in layoffs of about 500 workers, also served as a warning to factory managers. The idea of reducing the number of workers cannot be applied either, because of an acute shortage of labor; in fact, the goverment has already called for the import of foreign labor. For example, the textile factories in norther Bohemia could not function without Polish workers. Poles are also working in the AVIA airplane factory in Prague, as well as in the washrooms and laundries, where Czechoslovaks have ceded the nonmechanized jobs that pay low wages and entail miserable working conditions to the Poles. The most ironic thing is that this is the way Poland is repaying some credits that were extended to it by Czechoslovakia. The strike movement The strike movement in Czechoslovakia today is the expression of the discontent of the workers in face of this situation. Although the Czechoslovak news media suppress all news of strikes, a few reports have reached abroad. For example, before Christmas 1973 there was a strike of transporters and conveyars in a transportation company (the details are still unknown). In January 1974 there was a three-day strike by employees of the public-works firm that is building the Slavianews anaunetourin internaticnal FRANCE conference of the groupes taupes The Front Communiste Revolutionnaire (FCR -- Revolutionary Communist Front, the French Trotskyist organization) held a national meeting of its worker militants and factory sympathizers (members of the Groupes Taupes, or Mole Groups) on June 1-3. The conference, held in Lyon, was attended by 1,300 comrades. During the three days, discussions were held on a series of subjects: the European economic crisis and the demands that must be raised by the workers; the orientation of the FCR and the Groupes Taupes after the presidential election; self-management, socialism, and the struggle for power; the concrete tasks that revolutionaries can and must take up on a European scale. The discussions were
Areal to Prague-Vrsovice road. There again, the cause of the workers discontent was the new wage system. The strike was a success: wages were not modified (that is, they were not lowered). This was a spontaneous strike accompanied by occupation of the worksites. The workers asked that the strike be waged jointly with the trade-unions, but that did not happen. On February 14, 1974, there was a one-day strike in the rail-construction firm that is building the Prague subway. The number of striker was the same as the number that participated in the public works strike: 100. This time the strikers were truck drivers who were supposed to carry material for the construction of the subway. Once again, the trade unions did not take part in the strike. What is important is that 70 percent of the workers were members of the union and 5 percent were in the Communist party. The cause of the strike was nonpayment of five days' woges. The result of the strike was that the five days' wages were paid, but not the wages for the day of the strike. A manager was blamed for the origIn March 1974 there were unofficial reports of a short protest strike in a steel factory in eastern Slovakia, a strike that also broke out in opposifion to the new wage system. In many factories implementation of the new system was postponed because of the opposition among the workers. To conclude, we can say that a certain not unimportant social pressure is coming to the surface. But we must not count on an explosion or broadening of the strike movement in the medium term. In cose of economic catastrophe, the worker: will more than likely respond to the fate of their political leaders with total indifference, following the watchword "They did nothing for us, let them to go hell." held in a series of workshops organized by branch of industry and by union; there were also workshops on the struggles of women and immigrant workers and on the fight against inflation. Statistics (unfortunately only partial ones) indicate the following composition of the conference (in general, teachers were not invited to the meeting):
- 11% unskilled or semiskilled workers,
-- 33% workers in the public sector
-- 30% white-collar workers,
-- 10% professional and skilled workers,
-- 16% technicians.
29
cmu-re mayday action
The trade-union affiliation of the participants was about equally divided between the two main union federations, the CGT and the CFD T, about 40% in each. Less than 5% were members of the FEN, the teachers union, and 18% did not indicate union affiliation. The vast majority of parficipants were between twenty and twenty-five years old. SRI LANKA Responding to the joint call of the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU) and the Revolutionary Marxist party (RMP), Sri Lanka section of the Fourth International, some 2,500 workers assembled to celebrate May Day in Colombo, despite the fact that the government forced the organizers to hold the meeting at a remote site and despite the absence of adequate transportation. The main slogans of the demonstration were: No socialism without revolution! To stop reaction overthrow capitalist rule! To fight capitalism build the left! and For the rebuilding of the Leff Movement! At the rally the RMP distributed the first issue of its new SWITZERLAND out with the chilean junta! The annual conference of the International Labor Organizafian (ILO), a body that includes representatives of employers, trade unions, and governments and meets each year to "discuts labor relations throughout the world, " opened in Geneva the first week of June, This year there were representatives of the butchers of the Chilean people present: a direct repre-, sentative of the junto and representatives of the fascist unions set up after the September 11, 1973, coup. By attending the meeting, Pinochet's junto was seeking to "legitimize" its regime of terror, torture, and superexploitation in order to facilitate the search for profits of imperialist trusts in Chile (ITT, Dow Chemical, etc.). Above all the ¡unta wanted to gain recognition of the new "labor relations" established by the coup: -- interdiction of the workers organizations, massive and systematic repression agoinst militants, interdiction of the right to strike; -- institution of a system of police control and forced militarization based on spies and informers; -- growing exploitation of the workers: compulsory work on Saturday morning, worsened condtions, freezes on wages, and huge price increases. To denounce this maneuver and to exclude the representatives of the butcher of the Chilean people from the ILO and from Switzerland, the Notional Coordination of the Chile Committees, which is led by revolutionary militants, launched a several-weeks-long brood campaign of agitation which was to culminate with on intervention on the day of the opening 30
There was a very high participation by women workers. This was the second Groupes Taupes conference held by the French Trotskyists, (The first, held a year ago, was attended by 900 comrades.) It enobled them to take stock of the degree of their success in gaining a base within the working class and to prepare for the struggles to come. periodical, Ithiri Maga, and copies of its political resolufion. These were distributed in English, Sinhala, and Tamil editions. The "United Front, " which is composed of the reformist and bourgeois parties that constitute the government, also held a demonstration, which was attended by about 25,000 people: Unlike the CMU-RMP rally, it was provided with a special government car service to bring demonstrators to the rolly. Those who attended were offered free food and, it seems, drink. Finally, the United National party, the main rightwing opposition party, also organized a significant-sized rally in the center of the city of Colombo. of the conference and with a demonstration in Geneva on Saturday, June B. Once again the Stalinists and other reformists refused to participate in this campaign, just as they refused eight months ago to join into a united campaign to support the Chilean people. On the day the conference opened a leaflet was distributed inside the general ossembly and slogans were raised by anti-imperialist militants who had been able to get inside. This intervention was met by vigorous applause from a series of delegations. After this intervention, the general assembly confirmed the principled vote it had taken last February that the only representative of the Chilean workers was the CUT (United Confederation of Labor), which is now banned and whose militants are imprisoned or being hunted down. The supposed "representatives" sent by Pinochet were therefore excluded from the conference by a virtually unanimous vote (only the delegates of the American AFL-CIO were opposed) -The following Saturday the Geneva demonstration was attended by 3,500 to 4,000 people, with delegations participating from the Chile Committees in France and Belgium. This militant action demonstrated once again that the vigilance of anti-imperialist militants is not flagging and that they will be able everywhere to act to denounce the bloody Pinochet junta and affirm their support to the Chilean workers and peasants.
THE MARXIST PROFESSORS
AND THE COMMUNIST STUDENTS
SAIGON'S ECONOMIC _DIFFICULTIES. In a speech delivered June 6 in Thu Duc, an area north of Saigon, Nguyen Van Thieu made his first public criticisms of the United States. One time does not a habit make! "You have to give us money, " he enjoined his American mentors, "or the U.S.A. would be fleeing from its responsibilities." INPRECOR No. D published an article on the economic and social crisis of the Saigon regime. Since that article was written, Thieu's uneasiness hos mounted, for the U.S. Congress has proved reluctant to approve the aid budgets proposed by the Nixon odministration. On June 11 the U.5. Senate voted down a resolution to reduce aid to Thieu from 5900 million to $700 million for the next fiscal year. But the resolution was defeated by only one vote. And, one month earlier, this same Senate had rejected Nixon's request to increase the aid for the previous fiscal year by 5266 million. So for the fiscal year extending from 1973 to 1974, Thieu will have received only $1,260 million instead of the $1, 600 million originally promised.