•SWITZERLAND news of the ma The legislative elections
Legislative elections took place in Switzerland on October 25. These elections were unusually important because they took place while, for the first time since the second world war, the Swiss "paradise" is being hit by the capitalist crisis and the workers are suffering from unemployment and reductions in their living standards. Also, another first, revolutionaries to the left of the Parti du Travail (the Swiss CP) presented candidates. The results of these elections - which were marked by a very high abstention rate - represented a shift to the left, with the Socialist party gaining nine additional seats in the National Council. This strengthening of the SP was not due to this party's timid "anticrisis plan, " but to the support it received from the frade-union leadership, which enabled the SP to capitalize on the first class reflexes of the Swiss workers. It should also be stressed that these results are distorted from the outset, since 30 percent of the active population - the immigrant workers - are denied the right to vote. As for the Parti du Travail, it lost ground, paying a price for its tail-endist policy toward the Social Democracy and its sectarian attitude toward the POCH (Progressive Organizations of Switzerland) and the Ligue Marxiste Révolutionnaire (LMR-Revolutionary • GREECE Since the beginning of September 1975 the MEL paper factory in Salonika has been on strike. This is yet another incident in the series of strikes and factory occupations that has unfolded in Greece since the fall of the military dictatorship (notably the strikes at National Can, Eskimo, the Elefthis shipyards, the Madem Lako mines, etc.) The strike developed out of efforts launched last summer to rescind the layoff of militant workers who had tried to organize a single union in the factory.