A Certain Malady

"Because they cling to obsolete slogans," thundered Gaullist Minister Franc,ois Missoffe last week, "the unions will suffer the same fate as the political parties and be demolished." But things did not work out quite that way. In France's northern coal fields, 188,000 miners wore smiles of victory as they trooped back to the pits after their bitter 35-day strike. Defying a government antistrike decree that could have resulted in fines, firings and jail terms, the miners had won an immediate 6.5% pay boost that will rise to 12.5% by next April.

The humiliating defeat for President Charles de Gaulle added no luster to his popular prestige, which, according to the latest report of the French Institute of Public Opinion, has suffered heavily since the strike began. Citing an "evident correlation" between De Gaulle's sagging curve and the strike, the poll-taking organization said that only 42% of the public was currently "satisfied" with his handling of the presidency, compared with 55% in March and 64% in January.

But more important to De Gaulle than popularity was his fear of the strike's adverse effects on the economy. The wage gains by miners have already touched off similar demands by other workers in nationalized industry; when private employees start bargaining for a fresh round of salary hikes, the result could be--as Premier Georges Pompidou has put it--"a certain malady which is called inflation." Le grand Charles still hoped to quarantine the malady before it spread. From the Elysee Palace came word that "at the end of the present period of social agitation." he will make a nationwide radio-television address "on internal subjects of an economic order."

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