released, including
Daniel Eskenazi, a member of the Revolutionary Workers
League, Belgian section of the Fourth International.
In its May 4 issue, La Gauche, the French-language weekly of the Revolutionary Workers League, commented:
"The May 11 mobilization in Liege had something to do with this decision [the release].... "In two weeks, more than 3,000 signatures were collected for the petition calling for the release of the comrades. This included a whole series of SP deputies.... "A lesson can now be drawn-struggle and unity pay off."
Daniel Eskenazi and Fernando Redondo speaking outside Forest Prison just ing industry. The action front threatened to disintegrate.
-Other actions that would coincide on the sick pay issue were called off. For example, in public transport, a conflict had been going on for a long time on the question of extra pay for irregular shifts. Strikes were to begin on January 29. These actions, however, against the will of the great majority of the bus drivers, were postponed to place of a 24-hour strike, the union leadership proclaimed that a national day of action would be held on March 12. It would be a day of action for which the workers would get no strike pay and which was not organized in common by all the unions. The March 12. The government workers' unions organized demonstrations; but there was, for example, hardly any solidarity with the striking plants.
These maneuvers could not keep a lot of strikes from getting off the ground—in the post and telegraph service, in the sanitation department, in the printing industry. At the center of this were the strikes that were to begin in a large number of plants for an unlimited period, especially in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, on March 8.
But on the weekend before these strikes were scheduled to start, the employers appealed to the courts. twelve metallurigic: works, the judges handed down injunctions against strikes. Nearly everywhere the union leadership complied with the no-strike orders. In only ten plants in Rotterdam and three in Groningen did strikes start on Monday,
March 8. They lasted for 24 hours. Even the Communist Party decided that the struggle had now to be continued "by other means."
after their release. (DR)
14
However, in two shipyards in Rotterdam, the workers did not accept the antistrike injunctions. In these work. places, an indefinite wildcat strike started on March 8. After that, the bosses went still further. After the union was served with a no-strike order, the workers from the HVO and Wilton Feijenoord shipyards were taken to court as law violators. But the strikes continued.
It was thanks to the perseverance of these strikers that finally a breakthrough was made in the steel and engineering industry. clared in mid-March that they were ready to continue to give 100% sick pay for the coming year as well.
The Labour ministers have now walked out of the Dutch government. The other parties in the coalition agreed to further public spending cuts that the Labour ministers, with the masses breathing down their necks, were unable to accept. These cuts would have precluded the programme of jobs creation proposed by the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment.
The HVO strike leader told Klassenstrijd (the paper of the IKB) after the
"Even people who before the action were skeptical have now gained confidence in their own strength.
know what things are like in the rest of the country, but I know what they are like in HVO. Last year we were flexible, we sat and sulked about our loss of buy-
But with the self-confidence we have won now, we are not going to just sit back and complain the next time cost-of-living allowance is taken
The HVO and Wilton Feijenoord workers have shown that it is possible to fight back against the austerity policy. The PvdA leadership is following the op posite course. It remains the foremost applier of this austerity policy. And it is paying for this.
In the local elections on March 24, the PvdA suffered its greatest losses in its
It lost a million votes, holding In percentage of the vote, the PvdA fell back to the level it attained in the first elections after universal suffrage was established in the Netherlands
The PvdA losses were particularly heavy in the working-class districts. party's voters stayed at home. The main reason for this, according to a poll, was that "the PvdA no longer defends the interests of the workers.
Of course, the PvdA cannot defend the interests of the working people in a bosses government, alongside the Christian Democrats and D66. The governmid-May, offered more austerity measures and more unemployment.
It is clear that the PdA intends to stick to this austerity policy and this cabinet. Any criticism of Den Uyl's policy in the party leadership has been sup
Den Uyl has sacrificed a good deal of his support to solve the capitalsick pay actions, however, have given a good start for further dis cussion in the workers movement about an alternative to the right-wing policy of
In the union movement, more and more voices are being raised to say that the PvdA must break from the government of the right and fight back together with the unions against the capital-