poor, “SEOX

A chedictton, during the 1974 general aake, at the Bastille i in Paris danaitlien
wage increases and a guarantee of jobs. .

BRU WE

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George Marchais (center), General Secretary of the Communist Party of France, at a Paris demonstt

By Sue Devlin

s PARIS
ife in France isn’t easy these days.
The average Frenchman works a 44hour-
week. One out of three earns less than 1,500
francs a month ($340). For millions, the
cost of food, clothing, rent and taxes. has
become an unbearable burden. The official
inflation figure for France in 1974 was 15.2%
(union statistics show 17.4%).

But the number-one problem here is
unemployment. While the figures are not
as dramatic as those in the U.S., they are
frightening enough to the French worker.
Over one million people are looking for a
job, about 5% of the active population.
Hardest hit are those under 25 (about
350,000). Next come women. There are also
a growing number of engineers and tech-
nicians (about 80,000 to date).

The government pretends that the cri-
sis hitting France and the rest of the capi-
talist world is due to increased oil prices
charged by the Arab nations. President Gis-

card d’Estaing has called upon the French
to cut down on oil consumption, thus pre-
sumably keeping ‘‘cool’’ while everyone
waits out the crisis together.

But the Communist .Party of France
isn’t buying this. They believe that while
the poor here are practicing patience and
getting progressively poorer, the rich are
getting richer and richer. The PCF has
organized a massive campaign to prove to
the nation that the sacrifices called for by
he government and made by the workers
are going directly into the pockets of the
large oil companies and other monopolies.
This campaign, ‘‘Operation Truth’’
launched by the PCF in-January, explains
that the only solution to the present crisis
is the application of the Common Program
which calls for the nationalization of
France’s banks and the monopolies which
dominate the key sectors of industry.

The Common Program is the basis of a
united front formed by the PCF, the Social-
ist Party, and the radicals of the left. Last
May, united front candidate Francois Mit-
terrand ran for president against Giscard
d’Estaing. Thirteen million French voters
(49.2% of the electoral voices) showed their

support for the Common Program by vot-
ing for Mitterrand.

To popularize its position that the crisis
is not inevitable, the PCF has focused its
Operation Truth on the oil scandal in
France. The PCF charges that the govern-
ment and the big companies are respon-
sible for the crisis in France. The cam-
paign began after months of insistence by
Communist deputies to the Parliament that
a commission be formed to investigate the
practices of the oil companies in France.
The commission was proposed on February
24, 1974, and not voted on until June 17, 1974.
After the report ‘had been made, it took
weeks to convince the National Assembly
to listen to it. But now the results are out
and they have led to legal action against
numerous oil chieftains.

The parliamentary commission ac-
cused the oil companies of:

e Claiming to buy crude oil at a higher
price than they really can pay without any
contestation on the part of the government.

® Price-fixing at a price that had no
relation to cost and dividing markets
among them to obtain higher profits.

¢ Paying almost no taxes.

* Complicity between the companieé)
and government agencies which shoul iy
control prices.

When the government called upon th®
people to use less gasoline in 1974, col)”
sumption decreased by 5.6%. The govert™)
ment said it was not enough and sent out)
its inspectors, thermometers in hand,
control buildings to check that they welt 4
not too hot.

Meanwhile, the oil companies increase
the amount of gasoline they imported) :
stocking the surplus to be sold at highe!
prices at a later date. In 1974, the price
fuel increased 64.1% in France while
price paid by the companies to the aie
ducing nations increased by only about 3”
In a letter from the Libyan Minister of P&
trol to the French Inquiry Commission
was revealed that the price paid for bit
gasoline in Libya actually decreased
about $4 a barrel in 1974 from $16 to $12.
because Libya did not apply the decisi?
made by the other OPEC nations. sty

To reveal this scandal to the public, the y
PCF has put up 100,000 posters across the)
nation, distributed eight million leaflet, ;
and sold 700,000 copies. of its February

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 1975—Page 6