caterpillar

Management and workers’ representatives made a last-minute deal yesterday to “save” 133 jobs at Caterpillar’s French site near Grenoble.

The deal is conditional on a subsequent agreement on working hours, to be ironed out in the coming months. But most French headlines read, “133 jobs saved at Caterpillar.” Another point was buried beneath the lead: 600 employees will be terminated, their jobs lost.

A pessimist will say that the glass is half-empty. An optimist will say that it’s half-full. I like to think of myself as a realist, and I think that both sides in this long-running labor conflict are misguided.

The workers –and, I’d argue, much of the French media– are living through industrial nostalgia. There’s plenty of industry in France: aeronautics, pharmaceuticals, machine tools, automobiles, chemistry, steelmaking and aluminum production. But does anyone really expect job growth in industrial activities? I think not. Those who applaud the retained Caterpillar jobs, I’d argue, are looking back on a receding past.

I’d also argue that Caterpillar management, as it speaks through its French representatives and institutional communications, is living in a dreamy future of its own imagination. Caterpillar’s institutional tagline: Ready for business. Ready for action. Ready for tomorrow. That’s clever, sort of. But it’s generic, and could just as easily describe a new movie opening at the multiplex. I have trouble squaring the slogan with plant closures. And I question the commercial viability in France of Caterpillar-branded merchandise (gloves, boots).

Here’s the real challenge: offering a worthwhile future, a preferential alternative, to the 600 families confronted by the disappearance of their jobs.