Negotiations broke down last weekend at a Goodyear tire factory scheduled for closing in northern France, so employees resorted to a brazen tactic: They kidnapped the bosses, reports The New York Times.
On Tuesday, union leaders and hundreds of employees were holding two senior executives captive, threatening to detain them until the company agreed to pay out “huge amounts of money” to nearly 1,200 workers about to lose their jobs.
The men were released later in the afternoon only after police intervened.
While this standoff was short-lived, the revival of the boss-napping tactic, a sort of guerrilla theater that was used several years ago at a number of multinational companies’ French operations, is unlikely to allay the concerns of multinationals about France as a place to do business. As a debate resurfaces over whether France is in danger of becoming the next sick man of Europe, the Goodyear factory has become one of the most potent symbols of the challenges companies face in France.
“This happened because workers were desperate,” said Jean-Paul Fitoussi, a professor of economics at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. “But it is still an act that will underline the perception that it’s difficult to do business in France.”
Tension at the Goodyear plant flared last year after the chief executive of an American tire company, Titan International, touched off a furor in France by colorfully rejecting a government appeal to step in and buy the plant.
Read more of this report from The New York Times.