MINERS DEFY DE GAULLE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30073, 6 March 1963, Page 13

MINERS DEFY DE GAULLE

Other Unions Back Right To Strike (R-ZP.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, March 5. Miners in France’s biggest coal basin in the north today defied President de Gaulle’s requisition decree.

The pay strike by 240,000 workers in the nationalised coal industry today entered its fifth day. Communist and Socialist spokesmen have urged the miners to stay at home or mount pickets at the pitheads. First reports today from Lens, the capital of the northern France “black country,” said the strike was 100 per cent, effective at dawn in the area’s 10 pits.

Strike pickets stood at pitheads and only men doing security duties went down. Police reinforcements which w*ere sent to the coalfields over the last few days were not in view. Early reports said the strike was also 100 per cent, effective in the Douai area.

The requisition order exposes the miner* to fines or imprisonment for staying at home or "going slow’’ if they do report for work. Thousands of others are due to stage brief sympathy strikes ranging from 15 minutes to an hour today in protest against the requisitioning of the miners.

They include unions representing the French national railways, most Paris Metro < underground railway) and bus workers, worker* in the State-run electricity and gas undertakings, teachers, and students.

Airport control staffs—who are civil servants—are also due to stage a 15-minute protest strike which will delay

departures. The National Journalists’ Union has called for a similar stoppage to “defend the right to strike.”

The showdown with the miners began in the coalfields of the Lorraine Basin of eastern France yesterday when the requisition order went into force. But in the northern pits, where more than 100,000 miners work, yesterday was a normal rest day. Striking miners yesterday shouted defiance of the Government’s back-to-work orders at demonstrations at both the eastern and northern coalfields. Reinforcements of gendarmes and police stood by in key centres but no violence was reported. The coal industry manage-

ment ported up in the collieries a statement of the Government’s terms. Tt said the requisitioning had been imposed in the national interest after an unusually hard winter.

The miners are asking for an 11 per cent rise, shorter hours, and improved pension conditions.

The Government, seeking to combat the threat of inflation posed by higher prices, has offered a graded increase of 5.77 per cent this year, with new pay talks in September. The miners say their demands have been treated “with contempt.”