Quiet Riot, French Workers Say "Non"

In these trying times, everyone takes the loss of their job differently.  Take the French for instance, this past week:

Workers at a factory operated by the U.S. firm 3M  released the French manager they had held hostage for over 24 hours on Thursday after a deal on conditions for laid-off staff.

The industrial director of the group, Luc Rousselet, was barricaded in an office on Tuesday evening and workers had refused to let him out until he agreed to more favourable terms for the 110 employees who face the axe.

“A framework of an agreement allowing for the end of the current crisis on the 3M site in Pithivers was signed today,” a union representative said.

Rousselet left his office early on Thursday morning to boos from around 20 workers.

Locking up managers is becoming a tradition in French labour disputes, with police unwilling to intervene to avoid violence.

Earlier this month employees at a Sony factory in southwest France detained the chief executive and human resources director of the Japanese group’s French arm overnight and eventually secured better terms for workers facing dismissal.

Meanwhile in Paris, another group of disgurntled workers from Clairoix, a tire-manufacturer, was burning tires on city streets.

Americans in the 21st century don’t seem to get violent en masse over employment issues, they’ll strike but that’s about where it ends.   I said en masse because we do have a propensity for lone nutjobs who decide to shoot up their workplace.

But go back through history you get stuff that looks like French protesting…  the 1892 Homestead Strike, where industrialist Andrew Carnegie tried to fight unionization by cutting wages 22% and ended up with a four month strike and armed conflict between workers, Pinkertons, and state militias.

Or October 5, 1945, known as Hollywood Black Friday where scabs, striking workers, studio security, and police went at it at the gates of Warner Brothers studio in Burbank, CA.

I’m not advocating violence of any sort but its intersting to see that previous generations of Americans used to stand up more when they were getting steamrolled by the fat cats.