2 Tire Factories With Different Trajectories Reveal Social Schisms in France
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Version 0 of 1. AMIENS, France — This is a tale of two factories, across the road from each other in north Amiens, both owned by the same company, Goodyear Dunlop Tires France. But one, Goodyear, is scheduled to close after the union workers there refused to agree to new working conditions, which they argued were too harsh and benefited only the company. The other, Dunlop, has a promising future, and the company treats it very differently. Legally separate from the Goodyear factory since 2008, the Dunlop plant continues to make high-quality passenger tires for the upper segment of the market. But at Dunlop, the unions agreed to changes in their work schedules while the unions at Goodyear have refused. The new system preserves the 35-hour week, but it puts workers on a cycle of six-day and four-day weeks, with shifts that can include weekends and nights. It puts new strains on the workers, but it saves the company money and, of course, preserves jobs. In return for the new labor agreement, said the general manager of Goodyear Dunlop Tires France, Henry Dumortier, the company invested in newer machinery to make higher-value tires, while the Goodyear plant, whose workers rejected the new work rules, is losing about $78 million a year. Dunlop is producing fewer tires than before, trying to match its output to the general European slowdown in car sales, now at a 20-year low. But its 940 jobs seem safe, for now, since it is producing tires that Mr. Dumortier says fit the needs of the market. The story of these two factories might have emerged from Ohio in the 1980s. But it is emblematic for a France that today is itself at a kind of crossroads, trying to preserve both its industrial base and its traditional economic and social model — generous social welfare and health benefits and strong job protections — while coping with a stagnant economy, rising competition and an aging population. The fight over Goodyear also highlights the troubles faced by France’s Socialist president, François Hollande. In last year’s campaign, he promised to create jobs, restore growth and reduce the budget deficit. But with national unemployment at record levels, the economy near recession and the government faced with finally making spending cuts to try to reduce its budget deficit to 3 percent next year — having failed in its vow to do so this year — Mr. Hollande is facing what Le Monde last week called “the hour of doubt.” The magazine Marianne asked simply: “Has Hollande already failed?” “Under a government of the left it’s no different,” said Michael Mallet, 35, a 13-year veteran worker at the Goodyear plant and an official of the dominant union CGT, the most militant in France. “They don’t help us more than before, and it’s more complicated. Under the right we felt freer to demonstrate. The riot police are still protecting our bosses.” Goodyear, he said, just wants to shut the plant and blame it on the unions, a charge the company denies. His colleague, Franck Jurek, 44, has worked at the plant for 18 years. “We’re considered rebellious,” he said. “We’re called ‘the Gaulois village,’ ” resisting the Romans to the end, as in the famous Astérix story. In a way, said Claude Dimoff, a former union leader, “their struggle is folkloric.” But it is not expected to end well, he said, throwing another 1,200 people out of work in a depressed area, 75 miles north of Paris, that had a small riot last August and has an unemployment rate of 12 percent. Goodyear announced in January that it would close the 53-year-old plant, arguing that it could no longer make passenger tires at a competitive price and that the refusal of the unions to alter work schedules was making its production of tires for agricultural machines unprofitable as well. With no union deal to phase out passenger tire production, negotiations to sell the plant to Titan International had fallen apart, and new efforts by the Socialist government to entice Titan to return produced an extraordinary polemic that reflected badly on the image of France. “How stupid do you think we are?” Maurice M. Taylor Jr., the head of Titan, wrote to Arnaud Montebourg, the minister of industrial renewal. Mr. Taylor said he had visited the north Amiens factory several 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!” Mr. Montebourg, who as a presidential candidate last year campaigned for the “deglobalization” of France, held his fire, but not for long. He told Mr. Taylor: “Your extremist and insulting remarks are a testament to a perfect ignorance about our country.” Mr. Montebourg insisted that France is open to foreign investment, wins a lot of it and that French workers work hard. The fireworks were entertaining but damaging to France’s reputation, especially among foreign companies considering investment here and already concerned about increases in corporate and personal taxes. Some highly paid executives are moving abroad or considering doing so. There was some French hand-wringing, too, about the confrontational attitudes of unions, especially the traditionally Communist CGT, and the effort of governments to try to beat back the waves of competition with subsidies, as France loses competitiveness because of high charges paid by companies for social benefits and pensions as well as rigidity in the labor market. Ministers privately worry about a new wave of strikes unless the economy improves. Bruno Palier, a scholar who studies employment issues at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, said that “France spends much too much energy, time and money trying to save industrial sectors in decline” and not enough investing in new technologies. But Mr. Hollande is a politician first, aides say, and is cautious about moving quickly in any direction. He knows the economic problems of France, they insist, but is mindful of the example of Mario Monti, the departing prime minister of Italy, who made many of the right, if painful, policy moves to help fix the Italian economy and was rewarded with 10 percent of the vote in last month’s elections. “France being France, any sudden change of course can seem politically and socially untenable,” said Sony Kapoor, the managing director of the economic research group Re-Define. “While the broad direction and course need to be shifted, it doesn’t need to be done in a way that is politically and socially unsustainable.” France still has high domestic demand, compared with many struggling euro zone countries, and is less dependent on exports than Germany. “So change in France is very important, but the urgency is somewhat less,” Mr. Kapoor said. At the Goodyear plant, Mr. Mallet and Mr. Jurek think that the Dunlop workers made a “grave mistake” by agreeing to the more flexible schedule. For now, they are trying to create a workers’ cooperative to take over from Goodyear and keep the plant alive. Mr. Dumortier said that Goodyear had not seen such a proposal, “but we are open and will evaluate it with care,” although he warned that the plant would need large new investments to be competitive. The company is talking with the workers, he said, on how to manage the eventual shutdown of the plant. Mr. Dimoff, 60, spent 40 years as a militant union leader and reluctantly supported the flexible schedule at Dunlop, for which he was exiled from the CGT. He has no doubt that the Dunlop workers made the right choice, and thinks that the idea of a workers’ cooperative at Goodyear is doomed, because the workers will not find the money needed to make the plant competitive. Mr. Dimoff admires the fighting spirit of the Goodyear workers but says he feels sadness. “It’s sad,” he said, “because the factory could have been saved.” And he feels a larger sadness, too. “I’m part of a generation that experienced ‘the common program of the left,’ ” he said. “We had visions for the future, and different values, but all this is forgotten. The left has completely deviated from its promises.” <NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Maïa de la Baume contributed reporting. |