2 Maydays

We were here for Mayday two years ago and saw a dignified march through town by the various union affiliates. We were here again this year but there was no march. Instead both the CDT and the FDT held separate meetings in Place Assareg and Place Tamaklate respectively. The unions split in 2003 and although they can still organise some joint demonstrations ,see
http://www.moroccotomorrow.org/cdt-fdt-labour-unions-hold-march-in-casablanca-in-support-of-working-class/,
they clearly could not agree on one Mayday celebration.
The FDT seemed to have council worker adherents in orange safety jackets and red baseball caps, a speaker a la Arthur Scargill and lots of chants, and even a song, reminiscent of 60s/70s demos in Britain. The CDT seemed to have more arabic sounding music from the loud speakers. The senior (going by the braid) police officer and his plainclothes colleague who both attend any demonstration settled for the CDT which they observed from the comfort of the Hotel Roudani over a coffee.
The sad thing for me was that on the march two years ago there had  been a good turnout of women, marching separately from the men. At these demos there were only about half a dozen women at each. I suppose it is possible they had their own demo elsewhere but I didn't find one. It is the women who particularly need a union as they do hard, hard, agricultural work in the fields on a casual basis, like dockers in the 60s, and thus have none of the protections of maternity leave etc of city workers in foreign owned factories or workers in state industries.