US firm averts French explosion
A US construction equipment firm has agreed to pay extra compensation to French workers who had threatened to explode gas canisters at their plant. Staff at JLG Industries in Tonneins, south-western France, made the threat in order to get better redundancy terms for 53 workers. It is the third such incident in which workers have threatened violence against employers.
Elsewhere, French workers have taken managers hostage in "boss-nappings". The French Employment Minister, Laurent Wauquiez, described the tactics as "blackmail".
In the JLG deal, the 53 affected workers were each guaranteed 30,000 euros (£26,000; $42,000) in severance pay. JLG Industries is a subsidiary of the US company Oshkosh, which makes cranes and work platforms.
Meanwhile, a tense stand-off continues at the bankrupt New Fabris car plant in Chatellerault, south-west of Paris, where workers have also made a threat to blow up the factory. They have given a 31 July deadline for Renault and Peugeot, which provided 90% of the plant's work, to pay them 30,000 euros each. Renault and PSA Peugeot said it was not their responsibility to pay workers.
The BBC's Emma Jane Kirby in Paris says there is an acute sense of injustice in France at the moment, with many workers complaining that while their bosses continue to reap company benefits and bonuses, they are paying for this economic crisis with their jobs.
news.bbc.co.uk
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How would that be any different than the US? An attack on high-paid workers is too simplistic, even if it correctly defines part of the problem.
The mistake being made is that workers are wrong, and everyone else is right. How about "equally wrong"?
This points to the long-term need for (and likelihood of) compensation deflation as the US standard of living declines. The problem is that workers don't have a voice in the Wall Street/Washington corridor.
It's time you asked who is responsible, and how well they exercised that responsibility. You can start with legislators, presidents, Wall Street, management, and shareholders. Compensation is too high, across the board. Starting at the top, starting with the worst and least-competent abusers. Compensation at the top bears no relation to performance - and ordinary people must reach into their pockets when they screw up: taxpayer bailouts.
Message 25786657
Until there's a perception of justice and equity in compensation, there'll be trouble. There's nothing - absolutely nothing - in current events to persuade ordinary workers to trust ruling elites, and certainly not featherheaded, overpaid management in companies that are being run into the ground. So you'll get power struggles, discord and economic disruption until finally somebody figures out what ordinary people are seeing: they're being ripped off at the macro level, where they have no say.
You can rant against ordinary people as much as you like: but they want some of what everyone else is getting and they only have one way to make their voice heard. There's an injustice here; you won't see it and you won't talk about it, but others will.
It's just a question of time until people at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale begin to revolt at the real (not perceived) incompetence and greed of the elites.
"There's battle lines bein' drawn
Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong..."
Jim |
