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Industrial relations Kidnapped Mar 19th 2009 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition Bosses are taken hostage in France SERGE FOUCHER, the head of Sony in France, was taken hostage on March 12th by factory workers seeking better severance terms. They shut him in a meeting room and barricaded the plant with huge tree trunks. Released the next day, Mr Foucher seemed to take things in his stride. “I am happy to be free and to see the light of day again,” he said. （法国的人质事件） Business people in France are not amused. They note that the authorities did not ask the police to free Mr Foucher. Instead, the local deputy prefect（地方长官） accompanied him into further talks with the workers, who got what they wanted: a better redundancy deal. It all confirms France’s general lack of sympathy for business, complains one executive.（地方对这个事件的认识） Taking executives hostage is a well-established tactic in France, which has a history of confrontational labour relations. But it seems to be becoming more common. （举例）In January 2008 the British boss of an ice-cream factory was held hostage overnight after announcing plans to fire over half of its workers (on that occasion, the police did intervene). In February 2008 the head of a car-parts factory was seized after workers realised that he was planning to move the operation to Slovakia. Ten days later, workers at a tyre factory owned by Michelin locked in two senior executives in protest at plans to shut the plant. （历史上的老板绑架事件） Workers in other countries take bosses captive on occasion, but France is the only nation where it happens often. Might the practice spread? “Because of the state of the world economy, it would not surprise me if bosses were held hostage by workers more frequently,” says David Partner, a kidnap and ransom（赎金） expert at Miller Insurance, an insurance broker affiliated with Lloyd’s of London. Sit-ins
（静坐） are already becoming more common. In December workers occupied a window factory in Chicago for five days to secure severance pay（解雇费） that they were owed. In February workers from Waterford Wedgwood in Ireland marched on the offices of Deloitte, an accountancy firm, and refused to leave until they got a meeting with the company’s receiver. In America, says Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Massachusetts, workers are likely to become more militant(激进的), because of a sense of injustice over pay. “I could easily see executive hostage-taking happening here within a few months,” he says.（法国出现的次数频繁以及其他各个国家的情况） | 
发表于 2009-3-25 22:45:30
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