Desperation, rage driving French workers to violence (News Feature)

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Apr 22, 2009, 11:35 GMT

Paris - As French President Nicolas Sarkozy prepares an anti-crime bill to criminalize the wearing of hoods at demonstrations, a wave of violence is growing that represents a real threat to social peace in France.

With more and more factories shut and workers laid off as the economic crisis deepens, French workers are increasingly resorting to violent means to try and protect their jobs or improve their severance payments.

Over the past two months there have been at least six incidents of so-called boss-napping in which angry workers have forced managers to remain on the site and renegotiate redundancy compensation or force a halt to the layoffs.

On Tuesday, workers at a factory for the German tyre group Continental in France went a step further, ransacking the offices of a public administrative building in the city of Compiegne after a court rejected their demand to suspend or annul the closing of the factory.

With European elections on the horizon, the government has so far refrained from treating the workers as criminals. But that may change now.

'What happened was unacceptable violence,' Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Wednesday. 'We are going to prosecute.'

Although Fillon claimed that 'only a small minority' of workers was responsible for the violence, French media reported that the trashing of the offices was carried out by about 300 of the 1,120 employees of the threatened Continental factory located in the city of Clairoix.

This incident occurred just hours after employees at a factory belonging to the US car equipment supplier Molex released two executives they had held for 27 hours in an attempt to prevent the site from being shut down in the summer.

As one Molex worker told France Inter radio, desperation drove him and many of his fellow workers.

'I have just married. I bought a house and a car. I have a little daughter on the way. I have loans on my back. I have to work. And now I'm being told that I will be unemployed,' said the worker, identified only as David.

The French government has mediated in some of the disputes, but to little success.

Workers at a French factory belonging to the US industrial vehicle producer Caterpillar this week rejected a government-brokered deal in which the company said it would reduce the number of layoffs from 733 to 600 and drop disciplinary proceedings against strikers.

That agreement was hammered out with the help of Finance Minister Chrtistine Lagard, after Caterpillar workers held four managers hostage for more than 24 hours.

Caterpillar, like Molex and Continental, all say that the crisis is forcing them to reduce expenses in order to survive. But that argument is widely rejected by French workers, who have a traditional distrust of bosses.

In addition, worker's have been increasingly angered by media stories about lavish severance or pension payments to executives.

Boss-napping is not a new phenomenon here, having been used as a radical negotiating tool for decades. But its increasing frequency is alarming.

A trade union official at Continental reflected the growing rage among workers by saying, 'Everybody said what nice guys we at Continental are. Well, no more nice guys.'

About 1,000 Continental workers were to travel to the German city of Hanover to express their feelings at the company's general shareholders' meeting on Thursday.

'We know where to strike,' one worker told France Inter radio. 'The shareholders, they have our money.'

Most economists foresee a worsening of the economic situation in France this year, with forecasts of job losses ranging from 350,000 and 1 million. This suggests that the violence could get worse.

A recent film depicted a nightmare scenario of worker rage. In the film Louise-Michel, female workers at a factory shut without warning pool their redundancy payments to hire a professional killer to eliminate their boss.