Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
The Guardian, Thursday February 21 2008
The French government is working to contain a wave of factory strikes by
private-sector workers not normally known for taking to the barricades,
including ice-cream makers, supermarket staff, hairdressers and L'Oréal
employees.
Factory staff have taken increasingly hardline measures, with some holding
their managers hostage for days over plant closures and job cuts.
This week the tyre giant Michelin continued talks over the closure of a plant
in Toul, eastern France, after a government-appointed mediator secured the
release of two managers whom workers had locked in a room for three days. It
follows an incident last month when workers outraged at planned job cuts at the
Miko ice-cream factory in Saint-Dizier locked up their British manager, Prakash
Patel.
This week, staff at a Ford plant near Bordeaux blockaded their factory and
L'Oréal cosmetics staff took to the streets under the banner "because we're
worth it", asking for pay rises after their company's good financial results.
Unions from plants making products including skis, glass and steel also raised
the spectre of job cuts and closures. One logistics firm in the Landes caused
controversy yesterday by offering staff €1,000 (£756) if they promised not
to strike. Around half accepted, but unions denounced the sweeteners as
anti-democratic.
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who plunged to a new low in the polls
yesterday, will today travel to Pas de Calais to address workers from France's
north-eastern rust belt over the decline of the industrial heartlands.
He is trying to limit the damage of images of burning braziers and barricades
in the run-up to next month's local elections. The employment minister, Xavier
Bertrand, promised that he understood workers' fears, saying "a France without
industry" was not the way to build a future for French children.
Since 2001, more jobs have been lost than created in French industry, with more
than 500,000 posts scrapped. But although other parts of the private sector
have seen a rise in job growth, workers remain disgruntled.
Targeted industrial action has spiralled as workers including hairdressers,
taxi drivers and printers have downed tools over working practices, low
salaries and a lack of the "spending power", which Sarkozy promised to boost.
The percentage of a low-paid worker's income taken up by necessities such as
food and bills increased from 50% to 75% between 2001 and 2006.
Researchers noted that private-sector workers in areas that did not
traditionally see strike action were now joining in. Photographers have even
threatened to stop taking passport photos and to blockade automatic photo
machines in protest at government plans to issue free photographs for biometric
passports.
No comments:
Post a Comment