French Labor Holds Management Hostage---Literally
"French Caterpillar executive Nicolas Polutnik, center, with workers after his release Wednesday." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.
(p. B1) PARIS -- Of the 22,000 workers Caterpillar Inc. plans to lay off this year, the French ones have perhaps the most radical tactic for negotiating their severance deals.
In an aggressive, and peculiarly French, negotiating strategy, they held their managers hostage. The workers detained the director of their plant and four other managers for about 24 hours this week. Workers released them only after the company agreed to resume talks with unions and a government mediator on how to improve compensation for workers who are being laid off.
. . .
Jérôme Pélisse, a sociologist, surveyed 3,000 companies in 2004 and found that 18 of them had experienced an executive detention in the prior three years.
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