French Union Negotiation Tactics Involve Hostage Taking

Workers occupied the factory and are burning tires outside the plant, putting the area under a cloud of black smoke, a spokesman for the local authority said.

“The show is only just beginning,” Mickael Wamen, leader of the CGT union at Goodyear’s Amiens-Nord factory, said at a press conference after the release of the hostages.

The hostage-taking had been the latest twist in Goodyear’s woes in France. The Akron, Ohio-based company, which employs about 3,000 people in the country, announced plans in January 2013 to shut the facility after failing to reach an accord after five years of talks with the CGT, the main union at the site.
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absent - 1/7/2014 7:49:17 PM

+4 Boost

Unions are the "new" terrorists.....

MattDarringer - 1/7/2014 10:33:29 PM

0 Boost

Agree X1000 Let's take bets on how fast this moronic behavior comes to the Left-owned greedy unions.

TheSteve - 1/8/2014 1:50:53 AM

+3 Boost

Somehow, I think this behaviour will not endear the unions to anyone. It may have the reverse effect of making them look like violent, self-serving thugs.

MattDarringer - 1/8/2014 9:03:07 PM

+1 Boost

Americans are starting to realize that unions do not represent the workers anymore. Unions are a money grabbing tool to fund Democrat candidates. Most unions are "closed shop" which means a worker MUST pay dues whether he wants to or not. The California Teachers Association (the "teacher's" union) has a big % of its membership that are registered Republicans, but ALL of the political action money collected goes to Democrats and to issues that in NO WAY impact the classroom. Meanwhile, teachers are underpaid, have shocking class sizes, and are increasingly at risk to violent students.

I am forced to belong to a "public employees" union and I watch my dues money go to Democrats. If a strike were to happen in my job, I would cross the picket line and go to work.

SuperTurtlePlus - 1/10/2014 12:16:19 AM

+1 Boost

Your headline is blatantly unfair, and the hyperbole of some here–Unions are the "new" terrorists–borders on insanity. In fact, sometimes unions are all that the average worker has to support their interests, and that many of the rights and benefits we all enjoy today are due to unions, whether or not it's acknowledged.

Which is not to say that all unions serve those they represent well. Then again, I know of one or two companies that aren't exactly good corporate citizens, so there's a lot of mismanagement to go around.

What's happening in France is terrible, but what the people that have posted here are (conveniently, I might add) ignoring is that Goodyear is threatening to pull out, taking 3,000 jobs with them.

That's a lot of anger, and some people over-reacted.

I am not justifying the actions of the French union workers, though if anyone here claims that they can't at least understand it, they're lying.

And while I have spent time in France, I cannot comment upon their work ethic, though I get the feeling it's nowhere as lax as Maurice Taylor says it is.

While unions in the United States have been weakened significantly over time, European unions are significantly stronger, and don't respond well to what they consider ill-treatment by management.

And no one should for a moment imply that this is the way that unions anywhere work because if I were to imply that Americans can't even go to a movie theater without trying to kill each other I am sure that everyone who posted above would take offense.

And I would be wrong to say so, because it would be a generalization of the behavior of a few expanded to an entire country, yet the people here seem to think it's OK to do so when talking about unions.