Two More Victories

In the last throes of a searing election campaign, French politicians hardly noted a significant democratic victory on another front. In spite of fierce opposition from the Communist-run C.G.T., the biggest labor organization in France, the Catholic Christian Trade Union (C.F.T.C.) and the Socialists (Force Ou-vriere) signed a contract with the nationalized coal mines giving graduated pay rises based on productivity, with paid vacations to 250,000 miners. The next day 10,000 aeronautical engineering workers won a similar contract. Both agreements are modeled on the one signed more than three months ago with the nationalized Renault auto plant, France's biggest.

The credit went to the democratic unions; the Communists could only grudgingly accept the gains on behalf of their own members. Caught up in the Marxist dogma of progressive "pauperization," the Communist unions demand political rather than economic gains, preferring workers to be poor and militant rather than well-paid and independent. Some of the French workers seem to be catching on.

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