BY DEREK JEFFERS
PARIS - After a 10-day strike that grounded two-thirds of the airline's fleet and created a headache for the French rulers, pilots at Air France reached an agreement June 10. The pilots succeeded in eliminating a two-tier pay scale. The airline had also demanded a pay cut in exchange for shares in the company. Under the agreement, the shares-for-pay exchange will be voluntary for individual pilots.

Meanwhile, baggage handlers, railroad workers, electric company employees and others have also been organizing strike actions.

French employers and the Socialist Party-led government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin launched a propaganda campaign against the pilots by accusing them of interfering with the World Cup soccer tournament taking place in France. Air France is the official carrier for the World Cup. The sports event, which began June 10, was expected to draw one million visitors.

The main pilots organization, the National Union of Airline Pilots (SNPL), called out the 3,200 Air France pilots June 1 against the bosses' demand for wage concessions totaling 500 million francs per year (FF6=US$1). The concessions demanded are part of a company plan to cut costs by 3 billion francs annually. Employers hoped that this attack could set a pattern for other unions.

The pilots union demanded the end of a two-tier pay system, introduced last year, in which new pilots start out as low as 240,000 francs per year, as against 350,000 francs previously ($40,000 and $58,000, respectively).

The bosses called for a 15 percent cut in pilots' salaries in exchange for shares in Air France, a state-owned company scheduled to be partially sold off to private investors later this year. Air France announced profits of 1.87 billion francs last year.

After several lengthy negotiating sessions during the first days of the strike, Jospin declared his support for Air France president Jean-Cyril Spinetta. Jospin asserted that "the future of the company depends on improving its competitiveness." This was widely seen as a signal that the government was going to intervene against the pilots strike.

Campaign against strikers
The government counted on the help of the French Communist Party, junior partner in the Jospin government, to isolate the pilots and try to push through the concessions. Transportation Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot, to whom Air France managers are officially responsible, is a member of the Communist Party.

At the June 3-4 meeting of its national committee, Communist Party national secretary Robert Hue reaffirmed his support for Gayssot: "I think [he] gives the image of a responsible minister.... I do think that you have to know when to end negotiations." Portraying his party as "responsible," Hue said the CP was putting the interests of the "nation" first. "The World Cup has been in the minds of the national committee," he emphasized.

Nicole Notat, leader of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT), called the pilots selfish and said they were "forgetting to keep in mind the collective interests of other workers and of the company."

Officials from both Workers Force (FO) and the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) unions at Air France took their distance from the pilots, alleging concern about supposedly unfavorable repercussions of the strike for the other 42,000 workers at the airline.

Unlike the CFDT and FO, the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) made statements supporting the strike at Air France, although it took no action in defense of the embattled pilots.

"The government should conscript the pilots," said Charles Pasqua, a prominent Gaullist politician and leader of a new party, "Tomorrow France."

Le Figaro, one of the main bourgeois dailies, blamed the conflict on the government's failure thus far to sell off Air France. The main headline in the June 8 issue read: "Air France: the urgency of privatization."

One of the arguments pushed by the capitalist media was that the Air France pilots are "among the best-paid wage- earners in Europe." This is part of the campaign to get working people in France to identify with "their" employer and government in the economic competition between Paris, Bonn, and other capitalist powers - often waged under the banner of meeting the criteria for joining the common European currency, the euro.

The attempt to isolate the pilots was only partially successful, however. During a discussion by several workers at the GEC-Alsthom transformer plant in the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen June 8, skepticism was expressed about the reasons for the attack on the pilots.

"I think the lowering of salaries is simply to prepare for the privatization," said 38-year-old Patrick Garnier.

Joel Lejeannic, an Air France technician at the Orly airport and CGT member, told the Militant, "If the pilots win and break the two-tier system, it will be really hard to stop the flight attendants from striking to get rid of the two-tier system forced on them two years ago."

In a poll published June 7 by the national Journal du Dimanche, 38 percent were favorable to the pilots' strike and 34 percent were unfavorable. The poll, however, indicated significantly less public support for the pilots' action than for major strikes of the last few years. It reflected the impact of the propaganda campaign whipped up by the government, capitalist press, and all political parties, which portrayed the pilots as undeserving of support because of their "privileged" conditions and "high" salaries.

Other strikes break out
The strikers received the support of pilots in a dozen countries, from Germany to Kenya, Brazil, and Japan. The pilots of the U.S. airline Delta have refused to fly Air France planes as they were asked to do by their employer.

Other strikes are also taking place. Baggage handlers at the principal French airport, Roissy, went on strike June 2 and were back to work June 6 after obtaining a 1,500 franc bonus for the extra work attributed to the World Cup. Taxi drivers have taken strike action at Roissy as well.

On June 4 tens of thousands of electric and gas company workers demonstrated in Paris against the threatened sale of the state-owned Electricity of France and Gas of France. They joined with department store workers threatened by the extension of working hours to evenings, holidays, and Sundays, as well as a march of unemployed workers organized by the CGT. One of the main railroad engineer unions called for a June 9-11 strike for wage increases.

Derek Jeffers is a member of the CGT at the GEC-Alsthom transformer plant in Saint Ouen, near Paris.  
 
 
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