FRENCH WORKERS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 163, 11 June 1936, Page 8

FRENCH WORKERS.

ON NEW FOOTING. (Times Cables.) Received Juno 10, 1.10 p.m. LONDON. June 9. The Times Paris correspondent says the raising of wages to a level more closely approaching tho Western European standard illustrates tho danger of trying to achieve social progress in a country where the currency is seriously overvalued. The trades unions have won a sweeping victory, but have not got much more than the British working man lias received for years. French workers for years have been employed in premises which British factory inspectors would not tolerate. The wage advance lias been won only after years of constant agitation and sullen acquiescence ill life on a subsistance level. Yet, despite the bitterness of the struggle, tho strikers have maintained perfect order, sweeping the factories, painting the floors, repairing and plumbing, and even taking up collections for the repair of a plate glass window which was accidentally broken. No outsiders were allowed to intervene, 170 women strikers in one price store repelling with a fire hose a number of young Fascists who attempted to gain entry. The Manchester Guardian’s Paris correspondent says it is difficult for outsiders to realise the enormous effect of Monday’s agreement on the working class. The truth is that the balk of the employers have tor the first time agreed to sign a general agreement with qualified representatives of the entire working class patrons, thereby in the eyes of the workers, abandoning their sacrod prerogatives and placing themselves on a footing of equality with the proletariat. Tile agreement lias, inter alia, ended a practice whereby certain employers could openiy refuse to employ union labour, Socialists or .Communists.