Wages fight stepped up again in Italy

to night shifts and two consecutive days' rest in each At the 'Nouvelles-Galeries' department store in SaintEtienne, where workers occupying administrative offices were faced with a court order earlier this week, all staff have struck with official union backing.

• See French strikes story on page three. WITH THE Mafia question and the government's proposed budgetary measures threatening the life of the Rome coalition, Italian employers face determined working-class resistance to attempts to erode wages and conditions of work. In Milan engineering factories over 100,000 metal- impact on many workers in workers are in struggle to the public sector. enforce the full provisions of • Yesterday a majority • of the national labour contract, Italy's 260,000 secondary signed almost a year ago, school teachers ended a twowhich gave hefty wage in- day strike against a governcreases under the impact of ment refusal to satisfy • their the Autumn 1969 national demands on courses and strike waves. teaching loads.

The clear collusion between some of the Common Market's major companies — including Borletti, Alfa Romeo, SitSeimens, Falck and Autobianci-has forced a united response; there are stoppages daily against management provocations.

Undertakings

On Tuesday over 10,000 Falck group workers struck for half a day and demonstrated in the city centre, demanding a series of undertakings, including an end to work with dangerous materials, recognition of shop stewards and an end to management control over movement of labour.

Such problems are typical of other city factories — at the centre of them lie management attempts to weaken shop-floor organization which provided the impetus in the national contract fight.

The government's public spending squeeze is having its

Lebanese

peasants occupy land A POLICEMAN was wounded earlier this week when landless peasants in the Akkar province, N Lebanon, attacked a police station at Abboudieh.

The clash follows previous fighting in nearby -Tellinforcements were called into Houmiera, where police action by the big landowners to drive off peasants who were cultivating land that had remained idle for years.

Many of them are Alouites, originally from Syria, who now face starvation with neither land nor jobs.

Those who do get work are held in virtual serfdom by the bailiffs of the absentee landlords who own vast stretches of the soil.

So far the Beirut government has made no comment on the clashes, which have gone on for several months.