BELGIUM glaverbel: SUCCESS! The strike of the 600 workers of the Glaverbel glass factory in Gilly against the decision by the owners, the multinational BSN trust, to close the factory has ended in success after six weeks. (See INPRECOR, No. 20, February 27, 1975.) The factory will not be closed. There will be no layoffs. Three hundred workers have received guarantees from both the company and the government that they will confinue to work at Glaverbel-Gilly. About one-third of the workers will be transferred to other glassmaking factories in the same area; the transfers will be voluntary, decided in agreement with the trade-union organizations and the workers concerned. Those workers who are transferred will receive the same pay and benefits that they now receive. The remainder of the workers (about 100) will be progressively called back to Glaverbel-Gilly to perform new jobs; within a year, all of them will be taken back. These workers will continue to be listed on the personnel rolls; the workweek will be shared, though reduced; whatever part of the workers' wages that is not covered by partial unemployment insurance will be made up by the company (as will all benefits). As Comrade André Henry, Glaverbel-Gilly trade-union delegate and member of the Central Committee of the Ligue Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs
(LRT - Revolutionary Workers League), Belgian section of the Fourth International, asserted in an interview published in the LT's weekly paper, La Gauche: "It is quite clear that without our struggle the factory would have been closed by the beginning of February and 600 workers would have been unemployed. The management of the factory had said so. " The case of Glaverbel, like that of the workers of the Lip watch factory in Besançon, France, provides one of those rare examples in recent years of a tenacious, resolute, and effectively led workers struggle succeeding in preventing the closing of a factory and in saving the jobs of the wage workers and salaried personnel. In this respect the Glaverbel strike and its success stand as an exemplary fight for all Belgian workers, as well as for workers in other countries. To be sure, the manner in which the GlaverbelGilly strike ended was not a 100 percent victory. One of the objectives for which the Glaverbel strikers had fought was not only to prevent the closing of the factory, but also to oppose any dismantling of the plant whatsoever. This objective was not completely attained, for employment at the factory will be reduced by one-third.
41
BELGIUM It is obvious that in a test of strength between 600 workers and a multinational trust that employs a total of more than 70,000 people in various coun tries, total victory for the workers is possible only if the broadest and most active solidarity is organized around the workers in struggle. In this case, the Glaverbel-Gilly strike committee and all the vanguard workers of the region were of the view that total victory depended on the organization of a strike to the finish by all the workers of the glass industry, backed up by generalized strikes by ail the workers of the Charleroi region. But the trade-union bureaucracy maneuvered to stifle all efforts taken in this direction by the combative trade-union and political forces of the workers movement in Charleroi. The bureaucracy was forced to agree to some demonstrations and work stoppages in solidarity with the workers of Glaverbel-Gilly, whose cause became extremely popular among the whole working class of the region. But the bureaucrats succeeded in channe ling this solidarity into paths that averted a decisive test of strength with the BSN multinational trust. For example, a huge demonstration was organized in Charleroi on February 24; it drew between 30,000 and 40,000 workers to protest against unemployment and the reduction of employment in the region. But nothing was done to place in the center of the demonstration support for the Glaverbel-Gilly strikers until full and complete satisfaction of all their demands. And the organization of the demonstration was utilized to counteract the program of a general strike of unlimited duration in the whole glass industry. That is what the Glaverbe l-Gilly strike committee was fighting for, and that'is what would have enabled the workers to make the BSN trust capitulate completely. Incontestably, the fact that the workers vanguard has not yet attained the weight in the whole industry that it already has at Glaverbel-Gilly aided the maneuvers of the union bureaucracy. The bureaucrats were able to play on the workers' fears of the spread of the threat of layoffs to other factories in order to block the organization of a general strike in the industry. But the success of the GlaverbelGilly strike will have lasting and deep repercussions in all the glass factories, as well as in the other factories of the Charleroi region. The workers have set up a control committee to oversee implementation of the agreement; the purpose of the committee is to give an impetus to the workers' vigilance and to work against any maneuvers by the employers aimed at taking back the concessions and promises that the tenacious struggle was able to extract from them. The agreement that was concluded was approved 42 unanimously except for one vote after a democratic discussion at a general assembly of the Glaverbe!Gilly workers. They returned to work by marching into the factory in a contingent led by a red flag; they were singing the Internationale. Their combativity and their confidence in their own strength were considerably strengthened in this struggle, crowned as it was with success. An incident that took place the very day after the return to work testifies to this. On his own authority, consulting neither the trade-union delegation in the factory nor the workers concerned, a trade-union secretary signed an adjunct to the protocol agreement promising to return to the employers the "combat funds" that the GlaverbelGilly workers had collected during the strike by selling the glass they produced in the factory while they were occupying it. When news spread through the factory about what the union secretary had done, the anger was so intense that.it was decided on the spot to launch another strike. The strikers also decided to immediately divide up the "war booty" among all the workers in the plant. The trade-union secretary, summoned to account for his action, backed down before the resolute combativity of the workers. The BSN trust, which had made the question of the production and sale of glass by the workers themselves a matter of principle to be settled by the bourgeois courts, also ceased to press the issue. The adjunct to the protocol was thrown into the trashbin. The attention of the Charleroi region has now shifted to Ateliers Hanrez, where the workers have been fighting for weeks against the layoff of a militant trade-union delegate. On Thursday, February 28, thousands of workers throughout the Charleroi region stopped work for one hour to express their solidarity with their comrades of the Ate liers Hanrez. The rise of workers struggles in Belgium is now being manifested in many industries, although it remains modest compared to what is going on in some other countries of capitalist Europe. During the past several weeks there have been token strikes in the oil industry and among teachers. The workers of the Allard factory in the Mons area occupied the foctory to fight against a plan to lay off 200 workers. On Wednesday, February 19, there was a spontaneous strike in two metal factories in Brugge. At the Caterpillar factory in the Grimbergen area (the large suburb of Brussels) the workers went on strike for four weeks. On Saturday, March 1, the postai workers refused to deliver the mail throughout Belgium. At Solvay-Solvic in the Mons region a strike broke out at the beginning of the first week of March. In Liège, at the Ferblatil-Tolmatil department of the Cockerill steel trust, 1,500 workers went on strike to protest the layoff of eighty "tem-
REFORMISTS CANCEL porary" workers. The list goes on. The "Flash points" are many. The fact that the social-democratic Parti Socialiste Belge (PSB — Belgian Socialist party) is now in opposition and is encouraging (although extremely moderately) some limited mass mobilizations against the right-wing government presently in power in Belgium has contributed to heating up the atmosphere now developing in the country. The PSB is organizing a "great national demonstration" for March 15, an attempt to divert these struggles tonews of the and the. SRI LANKA GENERAL STRIKE Once again the leaders of the trade unions controiled by the Lanka Sama Samaja party (LSSP - Ceylon Equal Society party) and the pro-Moscow Communist party, the reformist parties affiliated to the government of coalition with the bourgeois Sri