Down By

Noumea Shu[?] Down By Strike

From a Noumea Correspondent

A four-day strike complet

paralysed Noumea from Mai

21-24.

IT involved at least 3,000 work and the industrial and co mercial life of Noumea came a standstill. There were some u incidents.

The strike began over a work* retirement scheme. The scheme \ to be paid for mainly by employ* with employees paying a small s into a fund.

Deputy Lenormand’s party pusl the scheme through the reci Budget session of the Territory x sembly, the opposition abstaini apparently not daring to v against a project for the workei The workers took it for gran that the Governor would give signature to the bill to make legal, but he went on holidays Paris without doing this.

Two days after he had left, statement released by his depu the Secretary-General, said that 1 Governor had refused to sign 1 bill, that the Assembly had ad illegally and that the matter woi be placed before the Minister : Overseas Territories in Paris.

The official statement exhoii the locals to be calm and not to influenced by agitators.

Unions Act

The unions called out all th members and all big shops a business houses closed. Workers the Nickel Co. banked the furna< and left only security staff.

Mobs of strikers went the rour

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of the town, threatening shops which had not already closed.

They appeared to be unmolested for the most part, and at the offices of the Bank of Indo China, where staff was working behind locked doors, strikers became violently abusive and smashed the wooden shutters on the windows.

The staff was sent home.

The next day saw armed police in the town and warnings were issued on the radio that anybody

found making a disturbance would be dealt with.

These warnings were heeded. The strikers went away fishing to fill their empty larders, but since they had already made their point, they seemed contented enough to be out of the town.

All bars were closed by order “for the duration”.

On the third day of the strike the public servants became involved when their association called them out in sympathy.

Trouble Ends

The trouble ended when the Min ister in Paris suggested that six members representing the striking unions, and a delegation from the Employers’ Federation, all fly to Paris to discuss the matter with him. All expenses were to be borne by the Government.

As the workers returned to work, delegates prepared for their free trip “to Paris in the spring”.

What the strike cost workers, business houses, and the Nickel Company has not been estimated, but whatever it was it probably wasn’t worth it!