Fates of 2 Factories Show Social Schisms in France

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.

Maïa de la Baume contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/world/europe/fates-of-2-factories-show-social-schisms-in-france.html?partner=rss&emc=rss