France: Immigrants’ Strike ‘Over’ But Strikers Keep Up Fight

PARIS, June 29 — The strike is not over for all of the 6,769 undocumented workers who struck here since last October. On June 27, their delegates decided to maintain their action against all bosses who have not yet signed a “promise to employ.” This document (called a Cerfa in French), is required for “legalization.” But many bosses must be forced to sign them. And there are many details to be followed to obtain “legalization.”

All this week, informational meetings are being held by trade (construction, restaurant, cleaning and security, temporary worker, etc.) to explain the June 18 agreement ending the eight-month strike (see CHALLENGE, (7/7). Next week similar meetings will be held for all the strike-support organizations.

The strikers and their supporters are establishing a massive organization to monitor every striker’s application for “legalization.” This includes opening two or three offices in Paris and one in every département where there are strikers; local and Paris copies of individual data sheets, so that snags at the local level can be ironed out at the Immigration Ministry in Paris; and special monitoring of the “legalization” of undocumented workers against whom deportation orders are outstanding. All this must be done during the July-August holiday months.

While the strikers’ applications will be given top priority, other undocumented workers also will be helped to file for “legalization.”

Mass Multi-Racial Action The Key

Amid all these bureaucratic capitalist roadblocks, it should be remembered that it was mass, militant, anti-racist rank-and-file action against the racist French government that brought these immigrant workers whatever advances they’ve made. As the CHALLENGE article stated (7/7), “The very fact that they struck as undocumented workers was itself a huge victory. It shows the international working class that immigrant workers worldwide can make such a fight and should be supported by all workers.

“A crucial factor essential to conducting the strike was the forging of multi-racial unity, notably between workers of African and Chinese origin, which gave the workers the fighting spirit needed for the ‘illegal’ occupations of work sites….

“PLP has consistently pointed out that as long as the bosses can divide workers by defining some as ‘illegal’ because they have crossed capitalist-created borders — and enables the bosses to super-exploit them and use them against native-born workers — it will weaken the entire working class. That’s why PLP says workers should ‘Smash All Borders!’ — which can only be accomplished through a communist revolution that eliminates all bosses and all borders….

“The continued existence of ‘conditions’ still differentiates these immigrants from France’s native-born workers….”

As soon as the bosses think they can get away with it (and they do hold state power), they will try to break the “legalization” agreement. The racist labeling of some workers as “illegal” undermines working-class solidarity. It enables the bosses to super-exploit the world’s 215 million immigrant workers with lower wages, worse conditions and constant job insecurity, under threat of deportation if they fight back.

Like the outcome of many workers’ reform struggles under capitalism, this one is a compromise. However, by turning the continuing struggle into a “school for communism,” workers can go beyond the struggle for “legalization” and take state power for ourselves through communist revolution.