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Angry French workers booby-trap factory, trash machines and threaten to blow the place up

French workers are renowned for their extreme protests and a group of employees whose jobs are threatened at a factory in central France have proved it once again by destroying equipment and threatening to blow up the plant.

Published: 11 May 2017 16:10 CEST
Angry French workers booby-trap factory, trash machines and threaten to blow the place up
Workers destroy equipment at the factory. Photo: AFP

The workers at GM&S auto-suppliers plant in the Creuse department of central France have sent a message to bosses and car giants Renault and Peugeot by threatening to blow up their factory.

Around 280 jobs are on the line at the plant, north of Limoges, that went into receivership in December.

According to trade union representatives the employees have started destroying their factory equipment and say they will trash a machine each day until their demands are met.

But more worrying is that they say they have booby-trapped the site with gas canisters and cans of petrol.

Images posted on Twitter showed gas canisters strung up to a huge tank of “liquid oxygen”. The words “we are going to blow everything up” (on va tout péter) were scrawled on the site of a giant liquid air tank.

Twitter images also showed workers cutting a machine in half with a blow torch.

Workers are particularly angry at Renault and Peugeot whom they accuse of blocking negotiations for a takeover of the site and of giving too few orders.

“We refuse to be taken for a ride anymore,” union rep Vincent Labrousse told AFP.  

“We have been fighting for six months and we are sorry to get to this point but at the moment there is a threat of liquidation and if that happens then the factory will not be returned in one piece,” he said.

Workers want new French president Emmanuel Macron to intervene and take up the case.

The radical action will not surprise those who have followed workers protests in France through the years.

In September 2015 striking French ferry workers trashed their vessels before they were sold on to Eurotunnel.

Every single seat was slashed with a box knife. The ships were stripped of fridges, televisions and equipment.

The link below shows the kind of measures workers in France are prepared to take when their jobs are threatened.

IN PICTURES: 15 crazy French protests you'll find hard to believe

TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

Published: 26 March 2024 09:55 CET
German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of €420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of €2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some €200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of €2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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