Monday, April 29, 2013

An American flees Paris

Titan CEO Maurice Taylor expounds on his dealings with the French in this interview.  Mr. Taylor tried to purchase a Goodyear tire plant in France.  The French unions then informed him he did not understand the "French way" as they work three hours, talk for three, take a break for one, then a lunch break for another hour, and so on.

You just need to watch the first five minutes although the rest of it is pretty entertaining if you like business stories.



This particular CEO started out as a welder. Not a prep school Ivy Leaguer type. The American Spectator reported:

"WHEN HE BECAME the minister in charge of trying to save what’s left of France’s vanishing industrial base, Montebourg—with no private-sector business experience—inherited the thorny Goodyear problem. The company had been trying since 2007 to restructure production and working hours at its ailing, unprofitable tire plant in the northern city of Amiens. But it faced the headwinds of rigid socialist labor legislation that provides goodies like a legally mandated 35-hour work week, five weeks’ vacation, and early retirement, plus the virtual impossibility of firing employees. No less daunting was the stubborn refusal of representatives from the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) to accept the company’s proposals. Goodyear finally threw in the towel in 2009 and started negotiations with Titan to take over the plant.

Maurice Taylor visited it and made an offer to keep about half of the 1,200 workers for a guaranteed two years. The CGT, faithful labor wing of the French Communist Party, countered with a demand for seven years of guaranteed job security. Faced with such intransigence and finding no support from government negotiators, Taylor pulled out of the deal last September. End of story.

Except that France, suffering from disastrous deindustrialization and record unemployment of 11 percent, urgently needed to keep the plant open. Hollande added to the political pressure by promising that he would reverse the unemployment trend in 2013. He had to find a white knight. So Montebourg contacted Taylor, suggesting that the negotiating climate had improved. Would he please come back and try again? Taylor went ballistic. In a February letter to Montebourg, he got a few things off his chest in a style that could only have been made in the U.S.A.

“Goodyear tried for over four years to save part of the Amiens jobs that are some of the highest-paid, but the French unions and the French government did nothing but talk,” he began in his best grizzly style. “I have visited that factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!” Pointing out that heavily subsidized Chinese tire makers are flooding the French market, he predicted that in five years France’s national champion, Michelin, would be out of business. “Sir, your letter says you want Titan to start a discussion,” he added. “How stupid do you think we are? Titan is the one with the money and the talent to produce tires. What does the crazy union have? It has the French government.…You can keep all the so-called workers. Titan has no interest in the Amiens factory.”

In a republican monarchy where feudal habits die hard, where a president simply replaces the king and cabinet ministers are treated like princes, this sort of straight-from-the-shoulder backtalk is unheard of. “Incendiary,” “unbelievable,” “insulting,” “scathing,” were the first adjectives that came to the French media mind. “How could he be so direct?” asked one shocked commentator. “He emptied his six-shooter at Montebourg,” said another
." Article

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

27 March 2013
On Saturday the Communist Party (PCF) aligned General Confederation of Labour (CGT), the majority union at the Amiens-Nord Goodyear Tire plant in Amiens in northern France, convened a mass meeting where it outlined plans for transforming the factory into a so-called “workers’ cooperative”, or Scop.
After the US agricultural tyre manufacturer Titan pulled out of a plan to buy the farm section of the factory and keep 500 jobs, Goodyear announced January 31 that it was closing the plant, which employs 1,273 workers.

Anonymous said...

WOW!!! this was big news in the global business community...in LATE FEBRUARY!!!!



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