“Boss-Napping”: 21st Century French Business Negotiation

“Boss-Napping”: 21^st Century French Business Negotiation (GMANews)

If you thought France would be the last place in the world where you’d find workers physically revolting to protest job conditions, then get in line behind me. But that’s exactly what’s going on at a Paris Goodyear store where workers piled farm tires in front of doorways and trapped business executives in a conference room so they’d have to listen to the workers’ demand for compensation in lieu of their jobs ending. This form of “boss-napping” had largely disappeared from France after the country’s economic crisis of 2009, but it appears that French unions are becoming more desperate as jobs disappear. And this latest incident of taking business hostages to force a ransom is tough to see as anything other than criminal.  In fact, “boss-napping” had become so commonplace in parts of France that laws were enacted to ensure the “napped” bosses were released unharmed.  But even if Goodyear gives in, and the hostages release their captives, don’t suddenly begin looking to France as an investment target, as deep French labor issues still grip the country, making it even harder for the nation to emerge from its recession.