"We'll Make Them Eat Rats!"

By Frederick Painton

A truckers' strike brings chaos and hardship to much of Europe

Without warning, a touch of anarchy brushed against France last week and brought a baffling challenge to the authority of President Francois Mitterrand. French truck drivers, long regarded as amiable if independent-minded companions of the road, erupted in a collective temper tantrum that tied up half a continent for a week--and surprised themselves almost as much as the Socialist government. Using their mammoth vehicles as an intimidating form of protest, thousands of the truckers blockaded almost all major traffic arteries in the country.

From the snow-peaked Alps to the windswept beaches of Normandy, 35-ton tractor-trailers sat splayed across highways, exit ramps and access roads. Braving the cold, the drivers huddled around roadside bonfires made of rubber tires, sipping coffee or red wine, and vowed to stick it out until the economic chaos wrought by their action forced the government to meet their growing list of demands. Said a defiant trucker camped on a roadblock outside Paris: "We'll make them eat rats in Paris. When there's no more gas and nothing to eat, then they'll know who's in charge."

Despite government offers to negotiate, the truckers only intensified their efforts. By midweek, the number of barricades rose to 270. In addition to Paris, where the main road to Charles de Gaulle Airport was blocked, such major cities as Lyons, Belfort, Strasbourg, Caen, Le Havre and Bordeaux were completely encircled.

A siege mentality began to set in as housewives rushed to supermarkets in a wave of panic buying. Gasoline was rationed in many communities, and heating-oil supplies were running low. In the Alps, the truck snarls were causing havoc during the ski industry's most lucrative week of the season. With schools on holiday across much of the country, hundreds of thousands of families had headed for the mountains, only to be trapped in long lines of motionless traffic. Some angry skiers simply abandoned their cars and trudged to the nearest slopes. Resort hotel owners reported cancellation rates of up to 50% as would-be vacationers decided to stay home.

Each day brought more extensive economic damage. A total of 51,000 automobile workers were temporarily laid off because of lack of parts. In Brittany, hundreds of tons of unsold fish piled up on the wharves and finally had to be destroyed because wholesalers would not risk shipping them to market with the chance they would spoil in interminable traffic tie-ups.

Like an oil stain, the truckers' defiance soon spread beyond France. In the Brenner Pass, on the Austrian-Italian border, drivers blockaded the road with their rigs to protest the slowdown by Italian customs agents. Alarmed by the creeping contagion of the s blockades, the Dutch government called for an emergency session of the European Community's transport ministers to seek ways of halting what the British press was calling "the world's biggest traffic jam."

On several occasions, frayed tempers led to violence. An enraged automobile driver stabbed and wounded a 53-year-old truck driver near Macon in Burgundy. An exasperated 5 motorist trying to back his way out of a truck blockade was rammed from behind by an oncoming car. His wife, who was sitting in the front seat, was killed.

Like many spontaneous revolts, the truckers' movement was a sudden outburst over a chronic annoyance. It began after French customs agents at the Mont Blanc tunnel launched a "go-slow" strike to demand better working conditions, particularly more heat for their posts on the Franco-Italian frontier, where subfreezing temperatures are not unusual.

Caught off guard by the speed with which the truckers' revolt spread, the French government responded at first with a series of confusing signals. Paramilitary police, using cranes, bulldozers and helicopters, tried and failed to clear the roadblocks. Finally, transport Minister Charles Fiterman, one of four Communists in the Mitterrand Cabinet, agreed to meet the protesters. But the leaders of the two main truckers' unions could not reach agreement. Worse, many drivers claimed that neither group represented them and sent four rig owners calling themselves rank-and-file delegates to the negotiations.

By then, opinion among the truckers was crystallizing around increasingly ambitious demands. They included simpler customs procedures at international borders, lifting of restrictions on truck movement during weekends, a relaxation of safety rules that limit driving tune to 60 hours a week, abolition of the value-added tax on diesel fuel, lower insurance costs, and compensation for damages and lost time during the protest. Fiterman came back with a nine-point set of concessions. But a majority of the strikers refused to budge. With the approach of another weekend, which would put returning winter vacationers back on the roads, there was speculation the government might resort to all-out force to clear the truckers' stranglehold. Instead, the government played for time, banking on the growing weariness of the drivers. By week's end the strategy was paying off as, one by one, the blockades began to break up.

The truckers represented the latest in a long series of aggrieved groups to demand satisfaction for their own special interests. Last year it was university students and their teachers who took to the streets and clashed with police to protest education reform. They were followed by doctors, travel agents, shopkeepers, policemen and, last month, Breton farmers.

It is all distressing for Mitterrand, who is in the midst of an ambitious, politically risky plan to phase out unproductive plants in declining industries such as steel, coal and heavy manufacturing. That scheme could lead to as many as 60,000 layoffs by 1988. With unemployment currently 9% and expected to reach 12% by the end of the year, the French labor movement is becoming increasingly restive. Coal miners, who went on a two-day strike last week to protest layoffs in their depressed industry, planned a demonstration in Paris this week. With any luck, they would not be delayed by any traffic jams. --By Frederick Painton. Reported by Thomas A. Sancton/Paris, with other bureaus

With reporting by Thomas A. Sancton