A Titan Delivers Some Home Truths To The French

UNLIKE THE UK AND GERMANY, French industry has never fully rid itself of  the bad practices of the 1970s. Today, the French unions are as strong and demanding as were British unions over 40 years ago.

            The boss of the American tyre company Titan international was asked by the French government to step in and buy the Goodyear plant in Amiens which employs 1,170 people. Maurice Taylor, Titan’s CEO, visited the plant and was not impressed by what he saw. In a letter he wrote in the French business newspaper Les Echos, he was brutally honest about what he discovered: ‘I’ve visited this factory several times. The French workers are paid high wages but only work three hours,’ he said. 

‘They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three hours and work for three.’

            This brought an angry response from the French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg. Mr Montebourg listed, for Mr Taylors benefit, the various oversees companies that are attracted to France; among whom were the perennial favourites of American industry, businesses such  as Coca Cola, IBM, and General Electric to name but three.

            Mr Montebourg also promised Mr Taylor that in the future, if he did not keep his mouth shut about the ‘lazy’ French workers, he can rest assured; ‘that you can count on me to have the competent government agencies survey your imported tyres with a redoubled zeal.’ 

I BELIEVE MR TAYLOR touched a raw nerve with the socialist industry minister; after all, even the former French finance minister, and now head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde has described the French workforce as ‘lethargic’, adding that; ‘Instead of thinking about their work, [French] people think about their weekends, organising, planning and engineering time off.

‘If you say to a French person, “would you like to be an entrepreneur?” all they do is run scared.’

            But Mr Taylor does not suggest that the French worker is in some way hereditarily pre-disposed to idleness; merely that they have enjoyed the ‘protection’ of France’s biggest trade union, the communist CGT, who still has a heel threateningly placed on the neck of the French economy, thanks to the politicians.

Mr Taylor describes his meeting with the CGT when he visited the Goodyear plant thus:

‘The first thing out of the CGT guy’s mouth was, “You’ve got to guarantee our jobs for life”.

‘They were telling us, “We’re not going to agree to anything until you do what we say”.

‘That’s when I said, “Hey you’ve got it all backwards. I’ve got enough people thinking I’m nuts even attempting to come over and run this facility and spend millions of dollars on it”.’

‘The French worker can be as productive as anyone else when he works, but he’s not working.’

Now there are still people on the Left in this country who will shrug their shoulders and, in disbelief, wonder what Mr Taylor is complaining about; and think the CGT’s position wholly admirable, for  the way they are standing up for the working class interest. But sadly, this Goodyear plant may now close, leaving 1,170 people with families to support, out of work.

            Of course, in socialist France, the villain of any unfolding  catastrophe will be the top-hatted cigar smoking capitalists, like Maurice Taylor. While the CGT union will find sympathy, if only from anti-American sentiment; a condition which may indeed prove to be hereditary among the French people.

IN BRITAIN IN THE 1970s, our workforce would  have fitted well into Mr Taylor’s description of the French today. Remember the numerous industrial actions at British Leyland? Remember our streets being piled high with black plastic bags of uncollected rubbish? Remember the mound of bodies that piled up because of industrial action by grave diggers, as part of a wider industrial action from within the public services? Remember the miner’s strikes and the power cuts?

            This is how a nation can be brought to its knees through over mighty trade union power. I am not suggesting that modern day France is fully comparable, but the ingredients are there and Mr Taylor recognises them in the attitude displayed to him by the  CGT. He would indeed be a fool and ill serve his share holders, if  he bought into such a crock as the Goodyear plant.

            The French CGT, like their brothers within the TUC in Britain, prefer a socialist government to order the affairs of the nation; and in France they have not been disappointed in the election of President Hollande, who, like dear old Dennis Healy, has promised to squeeze the rich until the pips squeak.

His 75% tax squeeze on the rich has caused many an entrepreneur to flee abroad; and for what? Like all such penal taxation against the rich, it recovers very little for the state to narrow its deficit, but in times of hardship it helps the election chances of a socialist party, if they can throw meat to an envious electorate who will always blame the rich – even for the state of the weather

THE FRENCH ARE still in a 1970s time warp. Their politicians have never fully lanced the union boil as Margaret Thatcher did in the UK. Indeed, rather than learning from her, they, in true perfidious Albion fashion, sought her demonization and produced Jack Delors to irritate her with his infectious Left wing cant, which eventually gave us the eurozone.

            If the French continue on their weary way impervious to what is happening throughout the rest of the world, then they will suffer the consequences. Throughout Asia, as well as the Americas, trade unionism is, if not non-existent, then at least they understand the market conditions and act in accordance with them to secure the best deal they can for their members, on the understanding that they cannot make demands upon employers that make the businesses whose employees they represent uncompetitive.

            This is the market reality, and if France seeks to trump it by forming the whole continent into an EU laager mentality from which they hope to overcome Europe’s decline; it will not happen. Europe, if it is to survive, needs to face up to competition and allow businesses to flourish without penal forms of taxation as well as  red tape. To continue on within a liberal-socialistic framework will only fast-forward the European continent’s decline.

            Mr Taylor has, through his contentious use of language, shone a light upon France’s intoxication  with workers rights; an inebriation which will lead to her national decline in the modern world.

            It is a sad fate; but one which also threatens other European nations. I speak in particular of my own. But this is for another piece. The French meanwhile should not pin much hope on a United states of Europe to help continue their triumph in the world, and help finance their nation’s laziness.