Workers resort to hard-hitting industrial protest action

2009 was marked by a wave of announcements of job cuts and company closures. Few, if any, were negotiated, and they led to many disputes in the companies concerned. Several of these disputes in the period up to the autumn of 2009 were of a radical nature and attracted considerable media attention, such as the detention of senior management, site occupations, the detention of stock and equipment, and sometimes threats to the company facilities.

Since the autumn of 2008, the publication of the pay and bonuses of company chief executive officers (CEOs) has shocked public opinion and especially people working in the many companies that, at the same time, announced closures or staff reductions (FR0908029I). Some 150,000 manufacturing job cuts were recorded in the first half of 2009 and led to many disputes. Some of these attracted public attention because the workers resorted to radical forms of action that are rarely used in ordinary industrial disputes.

Radical protest action

Occupations of company premises, which have not been uncommon in the history of French industrial relations, increased during this period. Moreover, senior managers were detained for a few hours – in some cases up to 24 hours – in order to oblige them to negotiate. This action was taken, for example, in the construction and mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, the ground services company Servisair Cargo, the electronics company Sony France, the telecommunications provider 3M, the car parts manufacturer Faurecia and many other enterprises. In April 2009, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, condemned such action – which some call ‘Bossnapping’ – but it started again in September 2009. The feeling of having nothing to negotiate and little to lose has even led to material violence, such as the ransacking of the prefecture’s offices by workers of the German-based tyre producer Continental in the town of Clairoix in the northern Oise department (département), the geographical unit of local government in France.

In three companies, workers threatened to blow up their factory. In two of them – the communications company Nortel and the car parts manufacturer New Fabris – workers put gas cylinders in strategic places that were visible to the media. Even though the cylinders were not linked to a detonator, the scenes sent shock waves and the authorities hastened the beginning of, or return to, bargaining.

Poor industrial relations climate

With or without the detention of management or other threats, several disputes highlighted the poor state of industrial relations in many French companies. For example, this was the case in the lingerie manufacturer Aubade and the tyre manufacturer Michelin, as well as other car industry suppliers; moreover, the electricity and gas supplier EDF-GDF experienced a long dispute in April 2009, accompanied by illegal power cuts and reconnections of defaulting consumers. Many subsidiaries of foreign groups were also affected – such as the car parts manufacturer Continental Autoradios, the tyres and rubber producer Goodyear, the electronic components manufacturer Molex and Faurecia – reflecting the harshness of restructuring and the reduced room to manoeuvre in bargaining allowed by parent companies.

Various demands have been made during these disputes. In many cases, it was a matter of negotiating the best possible redundancy payments, as workers did not believe that it would be possible to have the decision cancelled; for example, in Continental they won €50,000 per worker. In other cases, it was a matter of compelling the contractor to take on board redundancies or even to negotiate the subcontracting enterprise being reincorporated into the contracting company. These disputes continued in the autumn of 2009, and often – especially in the most radical cases – achieved results such as the payment of better severance benefits than those provided in the collective agreement or the creation of teams responsible for placing redundant employees.

Reaction to protest actions

Given that the physical well-being of the people who were detained was respected, public opinion did not give much adverse reaction to these forms of disputes, which they saw as being the result of legitimate anger.

Employer organisations were indignant, but made few recommendations that would make it possible to avoid such radical behaviour. The authorities alternated between condemnation and active interventionism in order to avert the risk of the protests spreading. It is true that the initial results and relative effectiveness of these forms of action ran the risk of such practices becoming widespread.

Many observers highlighted the uncovering of a major deficit in social dialogue that had developed in French companies, which deprived many of them of the means of experiencing difficult economic periods without an explosion of industrial unrest.

The trade unions found it difficult to manage these situations. At company level, tensions sometimes arose between the trade unions; however, on the whole, they were relatively united and quick to lead the mobilisation, even when the forms of action were rather radical. At national level, the trade union confederations could not appear to support forms of struggle that were often illegal, but they did not condemn them. The French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff – General Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff (Confédération française de l’encadrement – Confédération générale des cadres, CFE-CGC) took a somewhat different view, as it denounced the detention of senior managers. The other trade unions emphasised the absence of negotiations regarding most cases of restructuring and argued that employers were playing with people’s jobs and lacked respect for employees.

Commentary

Hard-hitting disputes are not unusual in the history of French industrial relations. In the 1970s, many company CEOs were taken hostage; in the 1980s, street clashes took place in the northeastern town of Longwy regarding the steel industry; and, more recently, deep divisions arose in the synthetic textiles company Cellatex in the northeastern Ardennes department in 2000.

Today, however, such disputes are part of a context of poor industrial relations and growing tensions. The role of the media has become central in two respects: firstly, disputes need to attract attention in order to have a public impact and win public support to force the state to take action. The media has also played a role in disseminating types of protest action, thus helping each new dispute in its search for suitable forms of action.

Although workers in New Fabris organised a rally in the western city of Châtellerault in the Vienne department on 30 September 2009 for all ‘workers whose jobs are under threat’, the various local disputes have not led to a united movement capable of influencing government decisions and employer strategies.

Jean-Marie Pernot, Institute for Economic and Social Research (IRES)