France: Strikers Hold Boss Hostage, Demand Severance Pay for Co-Workers

PONTCHATEAU, FRANCE, June 18 — Striking factory workers here held the Bobcat France chairman, four other Directors and a court bailiff hostage all day until management agreed to an extraordinary meeting of the works council.

The 297 workers are fighting for higher layoff compensation for 130 co-workers scheduled for layoff this month. The workers are demanding $76,740 for each worker plus $3,960 for each year of seniority; the company is offering one-fourth of that. These workers, who make telescoping forklifts, have already suffered 19 months of short time.

Bobcat France is a subsidiary of the Bobcat Company, a U.S.-based subsidiary of the South Korean conglomerate Doosan Infracore International. Doosan’s annual report boasted having “recently acquired Bobcat, which enjoys the world’s highest competitiveness in compact construction equipment.” But Doosan reported a $245.8 million net loss in fiscal 2009 so it plans to make its workers pay.

Doosan claims its “business philosophy” is to do “our part to care for communities [and] protect life.” But it seems that such “care” and “protection” doesn’t extend to its workers. Indeed, Doosan’s strategy for Bobcat is to raise competitiveness “by constantly reducing fixed costs, raising operational efficiency, maximizing productivity, and improving business fundamentals.”

Consequently, Bobcat France plans relocating its research and development department to the Czech Republic, where average annual income in 2004 was roughly one-third of that in France.

The militancy and solidarity that leads workers to break the bosses’ laws and take them hostage is positive, but it takes communist leadership to break the bonds of reformism and aim for workers’ power and communist revolution — the only goal that will eliminate the bosses and these attacks for good.