STAVING OFF STRIKES

Chronicle (Levin), 6 September 1948, Page 5

STAVING OFF STRIKES

(N.Z.P.A.-

-Reuter,

New French Cabinet Grants Workers Bonus

Copyright)

Received Monday, 11.25 a.m. PARIS, Sept. 5. Cabinet, at a meeting today, decided to grant each worker in private industry a £3 bonus payable on September 11. A communique said that the bonus would not prejudice "other wage measures to come." The British United Press' correspondent says that presumably Government workers will not get the bonus, which roughly equals the monthly increase in the legal minimum wage which trade jinions are demanding. The bonus is apparenciy a gesture by the Government to gain the workers' confi- . dence while it reviews the whole question of wage increases. The communique stated that Cabinet had granted the bonus to workers in private industry to stave off the threat of an industrial strike wave "after the first exchange of views on the whole economic and financial programmes to be. brought before xuture Cabinet meetings." The British United Press' correspondent says .there is believed to be a political aspeet to the bonus. The Socialists are reported to have agreed to support the Cabinet only if the Prime Minister, M. Schuman, granted workers a general wage increase. Reuter's correspondent says that the new Government has been formed against a background of "pin pricks and strikes."— stoppages varying from 15 minutes to 24 hours — which have continued to grow. There are still 30,000 textile workers out at Roubaix and 90,000 miners in the South of France.