You can't blame workers driven to boss-napping
Thursday April 02 2009
Human beings are not units of production. They are not machines without salvage value. They cannot be carelessly junked.
But that is how workers are being treated -- and people are justifiably indignant. In factories, shops and offices around the country, they are being made to feel worthless.
Losing your job abruptly and having your rights trifled with is one thing. But having your dignity trampled over is another altogether.
Employers cannot behave with such casual detachment without causing a reaction -- sometimes an extreme one. Workers are responding differently around the world to the grim news that their livelihoods are gone. The common denominator is desperation.
In Waterford, staff occupied the crystal factory, while employees are currently doing the same in a Belfast car parts plant. In France, however, workers whose livelihoods are vanishing in "la crise," as they call the credit crunch, are taking the nuclear option and kidnapping their bosses.
If I were an employer, I would pay close attention to these reverberations. They are not knee-jerk or attention seeking, they are the actions of people backed into a corner and with nothing to lose.
The French have devised a militant but effective rejoinder to the summary dismissals which now characterise the global downturn.
They lock up their employers until they meet staff at the negotiating table and improve redundancy packages.
Five cases occurred in the past month where bosses were trapped or taken hostage -- yesterday it was actress Salma Hayek's new husband's turn. Billionaire businessman Francois-Henri Pinault was cornered after a board meeting in Paris, and riot police had to prise him out.
The broader community is sympathetic towards workers driven to "boss-napping" because no violence is used, and because extreme times call for extreme measures. It is "our only remaining bartering tool", said one French union leader.
The rule of law is suspended, but the French give a Gallic shrug. As do their police force and judiciary. This is, after all, a nation which executed its royal family, and spawned a student revolt leading to a workers' revolution in 1968. This is a nation which steadfastly resisted global Americanisation, as the rest of us had Uncle Sam tattooed on our foreheads.
When an American commentator suggested the French workers should be arrested, his French counterpart responded that nobody called the police when Louis XVI was on the guillotine.
If I were an employer, I would pay close attention to this intensification in hostilities. "We need more answers rather than just the piece of paper we were handed that 'you're made redundant'," said one of the 80 workers engaged in that sit-in protest in west Belfast.
More than 200 people discovered their jobs were gone on Tuesday, with the Visteon factory shut down immediately. Confusion about the terms they will receive contributes to their anger.
The US owners are lucky to get away with nothing worse than their premises being occupied. A standard issue letter is no way to tell someone their employment has been terminated: efficient it may be, civilised it is not.
Industrial relations are at a low ebb, and this is a dangerous state of affairs. It should not be allowed to slide.
A newspaper cartoon I saw recently sums up the attitude of too many employers. It depicts a helicopter flying over a factory, with an executive calling by loudhailer: "You're all fired."
Employers cannot be allowed to behave badly towards their workforce because it could set a trend which others may follow. Governments should take note.
I'd start by fining companies which act peremptorily towards staff, as happened in Belfast. It might teach them manners. And it might drive home the message that workers are more than just a depreciating asset.
Some empathy must be shown --some recognition that a job is being snatched away because of external forces and not because of their track record. When you are on the receiving end of dismal news, respectful treatment makes a world of difference.
People also need immediate, clear information about the terms of their redundancy packages, so they know where they stand financially.
The mood in this country, as in others, is going to harden. But our leaders are behind the curve in terms of recognising the scale of people's despair. Outbursts may happen in such a vacuum, and sending in police officers with batons and shields will only heighten the risk to the social order.
It was a sign of the times when banks were boarded up in London yesterday, for fear of flying bricks during demonstrations coinciding with the G20 summit. Staff in the financial district were also advised either to stay home or leave that pinstriped suit hanging in the wardrobe.
Tempers are fraying, unlike the bespoke threads of the financial wizards whose greed tipped the economic machine on its side.
All police leave has been cancelled, and security experts are the only growth industry in these apocalyptic days.
Here in Ireland, the live register climbed by another 20,000 in March, bringing the jobless total to more than 370,000. Some predict it will top 545,000 by the end of the year.
So employers must be compassionate. They cannot protect jobs indefinitely, but they can treat their workers better.
Human beings do not deserve to feel surplus to requirements, or to be tossed on a skip.
mdevlin@independent.ie
