I commented earlier this month on the odd practice in France known as sequestration, where employee activists hold executives hostage. This occurs only at companies where labor-management relations are tense, for example when layoffs or plant closings are announced.

At Caterpillar France, employees held five managers for a day and occupied a plant. In response, Caterpillar France brought suit against employees for "obstructing freedom to work" (entrave à la liberté de travailler) and wrongfully occupying the plant premises; a court Grenoble granted injunctive relief last Friday.

On Sunday, the French ministry for the economy called labor and management to Paris, where at the end of the day they agreed on a "end of conflict protocol", now put to a vote among Caterpillar France workers.

What do I see here? A series of mis-steps along a path from bad to worse. Here's why:

  1. If employees are sequestering managers, then either labor-management relations have broken down, or activists want to make an example of the employer. In either case, an employer suit only aggravates the problem.
  2. Recent polling shows that most French people sympathize with employees who sequester executives. In the court of public opinion, I don't see how Caterpillar France could win this case.
  3. Last Friday's court ruling, I'd argue, is misleading: it superficially favored the employer, but pushed the government to act so that the judgment would not be enforced. And I can't imagine that Caterpillar France really wanted the evening news to lead with scenes of police forcibly removing workers from their factory. The government certainly didn't want to put the police in that position.
  4. By allowing the conflict to deteriorate to the point where it became political, labor and management were, I would argue, themselves sequestered in Paris. Of course, they were not forcibly detained. But I'm sure that tremendous pressure was applied so that an agreement issued from the meeting. Maybe the authorities imposed it or encouraged it strenuously; whatever the case, it most likely was not born of labor-management discussion alone.
  5. This is precisely what troubles me most: presenting a political solution as a private agreement. There may be a lesser-of-evils merit to the solution now on the table, but the end result will still be the loss of hundreds of jobs, at considerable cost to the employer.