Baccalauréat Section Européenne, session juin 2001
Discipline Non linguistique: Sciences Economiques et Sociales
Preparation : 20 minutes
Oral exam : 20 minutes, 10 minutes to answer the question, and 10 minutes for discussion.Using the document and your knowledge, make a structured answer of the following question.
Subject n°5 :
|
Analyse
and explain the different reactions
towards the large lay-offs and closure plans in France. |
(…) The first tremors came at the end of March, when both Danone, a French food manufacturer, and Marks and Spencer, a British-owned retailer, announced closures and lay-offs. The M&S affair raised eyebrows because its French stores are doing better than its domestic ones. Lionel Jospin's government huffed and puffed about the British group's short-termism and lack of consultation. Angry staff will take their ire to London next month to protest.
The Danone affair has had more effect. On April 21st thousands of demonstrators travelled to its doomed factory in Calais to show solidarity with 2,500 workers, only 800 of whom are French, who will be laid off as Danone shakes itself up. Opinion polls suggested that the company's public image had plummeted. Franck Riboud, its boss, complained in a newspaper interview that a consumer boycott of its products was unfair; he was simply trying to ensure Danone's future, not to be political. Naive, proclaimed the rest of the French press: business is inherently political, and managers must remember that they are part of a social compact before they shut plants or slash jobs.
(…)
On April 24th the government proposed amendments to an employment bill already before the legislature to make lay-offs harder and more expensive for big employers. When 1,000 workers or more are fired at once, the employer will have to offer up to six months of retraining, besides forking out twice as much severance pay as at present.
(…)
Even as Elisabeth Guigou, the labour minister, was speaking in parliament, Moulinex-Brandt, a white-goods group controlled by an Italian company, said it would close three French factories and lay off 2,900 workers. Other companies may rush to make job cuts simply to get in ahead of the new rules.Medef, the employers' association, railed that the government was resorting to "the most ridiculously outdated techniques of a command economy". Medef noted that the French economy is at an awkward moment thanks to a world downturn. Businessmen, it said, had created 1.5m jobs in the past three years; now politicians would mess things up by introducing silly new rules just when companies needed flexibility if they were to keep growing.
The battle has also turned personal. Ernest-Antoine de Seillière, Medef's head, is himself under fire as a businessman. He is a shareholder in AOM-Air Liberté, a troubled airline group, one of whose parents, Swissair, wants it closed. Last week, Jean-Claude Gayssot, France's (Communist) transport minister, accused Mr de Seillière of fleeing his responsibilities to AOM-Air Liberté's employees. Nonsense, he replied: he had nothing to be ashamed of; it was the government's efforts to wreck the French economy that people should worry about.
(…)Apr 26th 2001 from The Economist