French workers: "Negotiate this"

Posted By Brian Fung Friday, July 17, 2009 - 3:32 PM Share

A handful of workers in France were likely thinking that this week when they threatened to blow up gas canisters at their factories to protest unsatisfactory compensation:

Staff at JLG Industries in Tonneins, south-western France, made the threat in order to get better redundancy terms for 53 workers.

JLG capitulated today, promising to award those 53 employees as much as $42,000 each. The incident is but the latest in a rash of anti-employer stalemates and boss-nappings in the country.

Labor settlements are often negotiated at gunpoint, of course. But in this case, it's the workers who have their finger on the trigger.

WARNER BROS.

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GRANT

2:32 PM ET

July 19, 2009

Deplorable

I can understand just as well as anyone what kind of problems those workers must be facing, but this sounds dangerously close to non-lethal terrorism. How can France expect to be taken seriously if they can't stop this type of behavior?

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