Health has no price THIS autumn has seen massive mobilizations of French nurses and other health workers. These developments can be seen as the continuation of the nurses' mobilizations that occurred in 1988. Three years ago, a wave of nurses' mobilizations swept across all of Europe. In France, this "white shirt autumn" (so-called because of the uniforms nurses wear) culminated with a demonstration on October 13 that saw more than one hundred thousand nurses and other health workers take to the streets. Apart from its size, scope, and dynamism, three elements of this remarkable movement were particularly notable.! PATRICK DEBREST
HE first was the appearance on the political scene of new social groups consisting of a new generation of women wage workers. Their slogan was "Ni bonnes, ni nonnes, ni connes", (We are neither cleaning ladies, nuns [who traditionally worked in hospitals], nor idiots). Behind this fundamental demand of being "recognized", were various other aspirations that cannot be reduced to the simple desire to obtain a stable and recognized professional status. It also signaled the massive entry into the labor market of women wage workers whose jobs had been traditionally considered not only as supplementary incomes, but also as jobs particularly suited to the supposed "nature" of women.
In struggles in sectors as diverse as nursery staff, administrative personnel, social services, or finance and social security, jobs filled mostly by women, this argument had been used to undervalue the worth of these jobs and justify low pay.
The second element of this struggle concerned the crisis in the health sector and its main pillar, the public hospitals. A restructuring of public health services was and is occurring on a European-wide therefore our categorical rejection of the attempts to pass off the American liquidationist project and we oppose it. At the same time we will oppose the attempts to falsify our people's will by pretending that the majority in any sort of body has approved the liquidation.
In reality the make-up of these bodies is submitted to the bureaucracy which is out of touch with the will of our people and does not represent it. In order that these organisms express our people's will, their composition would have to reflect its real will. From this point of view, we demand and consider it necessary that the National Council [the Palestinian Liberation Organization's "parliament"] really reflect all the sectors of our people whether at home or in exile, and that the principle of proportional representation be adopted for its members.
2. We proclaim our complete and outright rejection of the liquidationist plot and the American conspiracy in its totality.
3. We consider that the existence of our people, which comprises nearly six million people, and its just cause, with the support of all free and honourable men in the Arab and Islamic world, are the best support for our struggle and our liberation jihad. By giving a decisive "no" to the capitulation plot, our people removes 6 from this conference the power to cover up the liquidation of our cause, and undermines it with the aim of making it fail by all means and ensuring the continuity of the revolution and the armed struggle, drawing inspiration from the fighters in Lebanon who overcame the Multinational Force [inter-imperialist forces sent to Lebanon in 1982] and forced the [Israeli] occupation forces to retreat to the frontier strip.
4. The weak-kneed leaders falter and submit to the desires of the Americans, opposed to the rights of our people; but the people does not falter. It is on this basis and with the support of the masses of our people that we assert our determination to carry on the struggle to foil the liquidationist plot, in order to open the way for the Palestinian choice of jihad and liberation struggle, until the liberation of our country and the establishment of our state, and until our people is reunited on its blessed land with its capital in Jerusalem, symbol of our national and religious values and of our civilization, our struggle and our jihad.
5. The proposed American formula for the resolution of our cause is nothing other than an obvious conspiracy for its liquidation to the benefit of the Zionist project in Palestine, which will prevent the exercise of the legitimate right of return of our people to their country, to self-determination and the establishment of the Palestinian state on its sacred national territory, Palestine... *
International Viewpoint #216 • November 11, 1991
EUROPE
Waiting for the upturn
S THERE an economic recovery or not? The optimists have been predicting an easy end to the American recession and thus a possible global upturn. Alas| The American market is not behaving according to plan, remaining mired in stagnation. Sidney Jones, the joint secretary for eco.
nomic policy at the US Treasury, did not hide his bewilderment when he recently stafed that the American economy was in the worst possible situaton, in which lower interest rates were failing to raise lending, while the budget deficit, estimated at $340bn for 1992 would not permit any fiscal relaxation, and household spending, which makes up two thirds of GNP.
remains sluggish
So here we are — after the victory in the Gulf, the "reconstruction" of Kuwait and the great opening to the East, It is the economies of the most industrialized countries that are failing to turn. A new wave of stock market fever is underway, with various alliances, buyouts and fusions on an international scale. This is drawing on the reserves of many firms at a time when other (or even the same) firms have not yet dealt with the financial burdens assumed in the frenzy of the 1980s
Everything costs money, whether German unification or the broader European unification, with its host of draconian measures aimed at disciplining and homogenizing the different national economies. The costs of the international reorganization of capital consistently turn out far higher than predicted, while the Third World has already been sucked dry and
Eastern Europe is far from providing a new fountain of profits
In this situation, governments are maintaining and toughening austerity policies All kinds of deceit are used to get public opinion to swallow the bitter pill of the bosses needs. At a time when capitalism is becoming even more internationalized , the workers of each country are being told that they must lighten their belts so that their" bosses can be in the best position on the market of reconversions
Even the union bureaucrats understand that their own fate depends on showing some signs of life to avoid being completely marginalized in the new institutional arrangements, In the Netherlands, France, Italy Finland (see /V215) and Australia (see p. 22) important social groups are pushing for struggle. The union apparatuses are taking advantage of this to keep up pressure while channeling these revolts into an illusory search for new social pacts, like in the good old times of growth. But those times are gone.