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WORKERS BATTLING THE closure of a Goodyear tyre plant in France have released two executives they had held captive for close to 30 hours before occupying the factory.
Flanked by police, the two men walked out of the plant in the northern city of Amiens as employees whose jobs are threatened chanted: “We’re not the thugs”.
Goodyear announced in January last year that it was closing the factory, which employs 1,173 people, after years of negotiations with unions failed to come up with a solution to save jobs.
Unions launched a series of legal proceedings against the company, but to no avail.
In a last-ditch bid to save the plant and get substantial pay-offs, workers — led by the CGT union — on Monday “bossnapped” the factory’s head of production Michel Dheilly and human resources director Bernard Glesser.
Goodyear’s human resources chief Bernard Glesser (centre) leaves the plant earlier today. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Goodyear had refused to negotiate until the executives — who were treated well throughout their detention — were freed.
France’s main employers organisation, the Medef, denounced the bossnapping as “violent, completely against the principles of dialogue and negotiation”, while the head of US tyre firm Titan International, who has offered to partially take over the plant, labelled it a “kidnapping”.
“In the United States, that would be called a kidnapping. These people would be arrested. It’s a very serious crime, you risk life in prison. But in France, your government does nothing, it’s crazy,” Maurice Taylor told Europe 1 radio, in comments translated into French.
Taylor, known as “the Grizz” for his tough talk, made waves in 2013 when he wrote a letter to the French industrial renewal minister calling French workers lazy and overpaid after years of negotiations by Titan to take over the plant had failed.
Workers ignite a bonfire of tyres in front of the Goodyear plant. (AP Photo/Thubault Camus)
Months later, he backtracked and offered to partially take over the plant, in a plan that could preserve 333 jobs at the site for four years or more.
Previous attempts
The practice of so-called “bossnappings” to protest layoffs was rampant in France at the height of the financial crisis.
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to stamp it out but failed to take any concrete action and militants employing the tactic know they are unlikely to face any serious legal repercussions.
In 2013, two separate cases of bossnappings were reported in France. Over the years, these detentions have never lasted more than a few days, although they have sometimes been action-packed.
In September 2011, four executives from Dutch aluminium group Constellium held in northern France were freed at night by police who helped them escape through an opening in the railings around the site.
Mickael Wamen, CGT leader at the Goodyear plant, said Tuesday that workers would now occupy the factory.
“We will negotiate the factory against our severance pay,” he told reporters.
One proposal that was abandoned in 2012 was a plan for voluntary redundancies, and the CGT now hopes to bring an improved version of that plan back to the table.
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Retrofitting is only available to the people with plenty of cash . Same as most other benefits .
All I read in the above article is that we need to lower our living standards drastically. I do not trust anyone who tells me we need to eat less meat and then replace it with processed crap.
@An Drew Bearla: Yes, all that came out of the big meeting in Davos is that we must stop eating meat and dairy or the world will starve, and we must share our cars or cycle or walk, all the mullarkey Ryan is spouting and all from a bunch that then sat down to a four course meat laden lunch after flying in on 1500 private jets. The narrative to blame the ordinary consumer and deflect away from their lavish carbon laden lifestyles is ridiculous. Animal farm springs to mind
Will do this, will improve that. All talk and no action. The government has no motivation to implement any of these policies. Still using diesel commuter trains ffs.
@Tomo: We are making progress faster than ever before. I would live to speed it up too, but denial of what’s happening is nor helpful.
Bottom line is what comes out of our chimneys and out of the vehicle tailpipes isn’t good for us and has resulted in worse health for our population and more deaths. Even if you think climate change isn’t real (it is) then only a fool would continue to not tackle us poisoning ourselves.
@Barry Somers: a few more new taxes will sort everything.
That’s the problem, the greens solution is to tax the problem with no alternative. Of course, people are turning against it
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Not true.
@Nicholas McMurry: Yes it is true. Tax tax tax from a fella that knows about as much about climate change as my 8yr old. All the solutions Eamo is pushing for at present are financially or infrastructurally unviable like hydrogen which is inhibitively expensive to make or offshore wind which we have no way due to planning restrictions and lack of infrastructure make, but which are the chief objectives of E3G which ol Eamo is/was a senior associate of, as usual the self serving bull we have gotten used to in Irish politics. Any man that signs off on tax incentives for fuel for private jets and the writing off of carbon footprint for such is not green. No viable alternatives for anything, no reduction in our carbon footprint despite all the waffle, lying about our agricultural footprint throwing our farmers and food producers under a bus because they are a soft target while letting big corporations off the hook by giving them all our carbon credits from our grasslands, hedgegrows and forestry. Ireland is not one of the worst polluters as we are so often told to justify taxing the life out of us we just fall foul of the carbon credit rules that the large industrial countries set up to make themselves look far better than they really are, America, Germany France etc
@Nicholas McMurry: of course its true, if the government and greens in particular wanted to actually do something that wasn’t a punitive tax measure, it would be a shock.
Insulation is the most effective measure, yet they persist in making the retrofitting policy, part of the convoluted seai scheme which requires “trained” certified installers, when homeowners could, depending on their current skills learn to install it just as effectively themselves, by watching a few instructional videos, just like the “trained” installers did…
Subsidising insulation for domestic projects with a zero vat rate, would encourage more people to retrofit insulation to their homes themselves, reducing the amount of heating from all sources, along with particulate and carbon emissions across the board.
Better put the old age pension up. Where will all the food come from? More homes will be needed.
Anyone find those TRVs (main image) a complete waste of time?
I find that after a year the da*n thing is stuck on full heat. (I’ve checked the pin underneath and it seems to move freely) Was this just another way for the plumbers to make a few bucks :) ?
So, if we live in England or Wales and insulate our homes we could live for 836,000 years. I don’t want to live that long.
Why does an article in an Irish publication write about a foreign country without stipulating that it is a study done in that foreign country?
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