Bossnapping - Hostages to tradition

By Peggy Hollinger
Published: May 20 2009 20:34 | Last updated: May 20 2009 20:34

There are worse ways to spend time as a hostage than being locked in the headquarters of one of France's best-known champagne houses.
Back in the summer of 1993, the boss of Moët & Chandon was trapped in his Epernay offices overnight with only a fridge full of bubbly for company. Meanwhile, workers barricaded themselves in the cellars and cracked open a few of the 95m bottles laid down in the dusty warren of tunnels to protest against the group's plan to commemorate its 250th anniversary with 250 job cuts.
Bossnapping is nothing new in France, almost as much a part of the culture as baguettes and brie. But in recent months, the economic crisis and rising tide of factory closures and restructurings have prompted an unusually high rate of corporate hold-ups. At least 10 companies over the past two months have had managers held hostage, while many more have had factories occupied.
Though most have been peaceful, and no hostage has come to serious harm, few experiences have been as amiable as that champagne-fuelled evening at Epernay. Two managers at the French factory of Molex, the US connectors group, were jostled and bruised as they walked away from their 26-hour ordeal last month (and another Molex manager received death threats in the post). Only last week, 74 energy workers were arrested after extensive damage was done to the Paris offices of power services groups ErDF and GrDF during a protest over pay.
The growing radicalisation of protest is worrying the French government, which has privately discouraged managers from pressing charges against kidnappers and protesters to avoid inflaming an already tense social situation.
But companies, too, are struggling with the potentially explosive issue of how to implement restructuring plans in the heat of the economic crisis. The anxiety is particularly acute among foreign companies, unfamiliar with the French tendency to take direct action and where bossnappings have been most frequent.

Tips for surviving if the worst happens

● Think carefully about where to hold your meetings with employees. Meeting at a factory earmarked for closure may ignite an already tense situation.
● Prepare the venue by discreetly storing a change of clothes, toothbrush and baby-wipes close to where you will be sitting. If possible have a water cooler handy and a few snacks.
● Put your family on speed dial on the mobile phone.
● Go to the toilet before the meeting. One recent hostage described his humiliation at having to ask his employees to go to the toilet. Jean-Paul Sartre, the leftwing philosopher who cheered on bossnappings in the 1970s, once remarked that "when a boss has to ask his employees' permission to piss, a great step forward has been taken".
● Don't panic. Most bossnappings pass peacefully, with employees often providing food and drink. The main aim is often to get media coverage for union claims and hostages are generally released within a day.
● If your captors get unpleasant, sign whatever they ask. Agreements extracted under duress are not valid under French law.
● Bring objective observers, such as mediators, to negotiations. They can help to avert aggressive action.
● Remember that hostage taking remains rare. Ten in two months is hardly significant when hundreds of French companies are cutting jobs and closing factories. If you have been bossnapped, it may well be that you have failed to spot the warning signs.

Restructuring specialists report a surge of interest in advice from foreign clients, and small businesses are sprouting up across the country offering guidance on how to deal with a hostage situation.
Xavier Lacoste, chief executive of social relations firm Altédia, says the first lesson of bossnappings is not how to survive them but how to avoid them. This involves deep dialogue with staff, he says. "You do not have this kind of movement in companies with a tradition of discussion."
He cites Peugeot and Renault, the French carmakers, which have been able to implement sweeping job cut plans without managers being taken hostage, although they have had their fair share of strikes. Through negotiation, the companies have arrived at innovative solutions, such as white-collar workers volunteering for temporary wage cuts to help reduce job losses in the factories. "People will accept job cuts as long as you treat them with dignity," he adds.
Companies also have to be consistent in their treatment of redundancies, says Mr Lacoste. He cites the kidnapping of four managers at Sony, when the Japanese electronics group announced the closure of a French factory not long after a previous hefty redundancy plan. "Not only were they closing the factory but the workers who were losing their jobs were getting less than those who left before."
Many experts note that the hostage-taking often seems driven by a sense of despair over decisions taken in remote head of­fices with little sensitivity shown for the local situation. "In certain regions, when a factory closes it is the last one remaining. And the workers have no possibility of finding another job," says Mr Lacoste.
Jacques Buhart, a partner at law firm Herbert Smith, has advised dozens of international companies on restructurings and says the remoteness of decision-making can be a big problem in implementing job cut programmes. "People don't understand that the power to decide the fate of these factories is not in France," he said.
"The first thing I tell clients is that they are going to be kidnapped," he says, jokingly. "The second is that they have to be prepared to go to court."
But not to press charges. Instead, the court appearance is part of the ritual required to implement a restructuring plan. Under French law, the works council must be informed of any job cut proposals, and give an opinion on them, before they can go ahead. The opinion is non-binding, so even if the works council rejects the plan, it can still be enacted.
But, says Mr Buhart, "the position the unions take is to say they do not have enough information to give an opinion. So the company gives more and they still do not have enough. At some point management has to go to court to say they have given all the information necessary for an opinion". Then, he says, a judge will normally demand a few details but is also likely to rule that the works council will then have to opine. The real problem is that "all this can take six months".
Long before getting to that stage, Mr Buhart says managers have to prepare the way politically. In France, where pride in the country's industrial heritage runs deep, closing a factory – no matter how unprofitable – can be a minefield.
Once the plan is drawn up, managers have to get the government's local representative – the Paris-appointed prefect – onside. Foreign companies are often reluctant to do so, he says, for fear of government hostility to job cuts. But failure to do so could cause even greater political outrage if employee protest gets out of hand and the auth­orities had not been forewarned. "It is absolutely essential" to talk to the prefect, Mr Buhart says. "You have to go with the timetable and explain exactly what you are doing."
The real risk of political controversy lies with local officials, ac­cording to other restructuring specialists. "The one you don't tell is the local mayor, because he will have to be re-elected," says one who asked not to be named.
Yet companies need not fear a bout of conflicts if they recognise that workers have not aimed to stop restructuring itself, suggests Guy Groux, social relations professor at Sciences-Po. "The claims are about the value of the payoffs and the conditions of departure. They are not defending jobs."
Mr Lacoste agrees. In the end it often boils down to a question of money. "Companies need to be aware that the differences unions are asking for is often not a lot."

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