It is the controversy of golden parachutes

In a State of law, only the State has the right to lock up. It has a monopoly of legitimate violence. It is a pillar of democracy, a principle that no one should challenge. Or he is beaten in the face. By employees which enclose their leaders, often with the support of local unions. The majority of the French, whose two-thirds believe that these illegal actions should not be sanctioned by justice. And even by patterns, ready to give that some of their colleagues do that harvest the anger they have sown.

A strong challenge to the right of everyone to freedom cannot come only a coup of some feverish activists hot in the heat of a blocked negotiations. Its roots are deep. The recent kidnappings of 3 m, Caterpillar, Scapa or Faurecia are part of a long tradition of operations like strikes of 1936, Lip in 1973, Usinor in 1982. They are also in a poor social dialogue often based on mistrust, another French tradition. But there are also new shocks at the origin of the current wave.

The first shock is cultural. Foreign companies employ nearly 2 million employees in France, a number which has almost doubled in a decade. Today, while the activity moves back for the first time in the world at the same time, the employees discover the methods used by these groups in times of crisis is not a coincidence if most of the kidnappings took place in subsidiaries of foreign firms. And these methods are more brutal than those courses usually in France. It terminates early and fort, leaving quickly rehire also. Are compensated soon. It even less reluctant to wield the axe in France that social safety nets are judged is very protective, and that the seat is far. It negotiates poor, because the margin of manoeuvre left by the parent is often non-existent.

The second shock is financial. Antan, companies licenciaient when they were in the red for months. Today, 3 m, Scapa and Caterpillar reduce massive downsizing while they identified the benefits end of 2008 (in contrast to Faurecia, deficit since 2005). However, it is not these so-called "stock" dismissals which caused the ire of workers... but the weakness of the compensation that accompanies. "They still have plenty of money, they may give us a little more." The same lever could play in the motor equipment. Except that the money, this time, is not in the pockets of shareholders but in the State the paying the companies or their donors of orders, automakers. "It might give us also."

The third shock is management. It is not only the undertakings concerned by the social movements, but the whole of the French society. It is the controversy of "golden parachutes". The leaders who fail are thanked sometimes involving amounts that appear to be huge. Employees who have not done are ejected touching which seem always to their misery. "They take at least centuries of SMIC, we receive more than months." Here again, this is the sense of injustice which incenses. There is money for some and not others.

Finally, the fourth shock, is media. As said the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, "now, when there is a strike, person does in sees." However, today, the success of a social action is measured more kilometres of parades in the street, but the minutes from the major television news. Assumed to act in ways most spectacular strikes and demonstrations. In this regard, the "bossnapping" ensures treatment in the media, and the hearing that goes with.

Except to resolve to see social life closer to banditry, it will be necessary well Act. Images of sequestration obligingly displayed on the major foreign newspapers are evil to the French economy. The judicial strength promised by the President of the Republic is only a small part of the solution, that it can be translated into facts. Survival kit recommended patterns by crisis, communicating with shirt and razor to make good figure to cameras the next day morning, does not deal with the problem. The call for the reflection of the journalists on the impact of the images passes often after other priorities such as the audience share. No, there are only two solutions to avoid the temptation to extreme solutions such as sequestration. Explain. Dialogue. Explain, by all means, even if Union representatives pretend not to understand. For example, explain that a reduction of staffing today can save the company tomorrow. And dialogue. The measures taken to rebuild a true social dialogue in France, for example on trade union representativeness, go in the right direction. But it will take time, long time. In the meantime, there will be other explosions.