Sony France boss held hostage by disgruntled workers
By Thomas Ricker 
posted March 13th 2009 2:15AM
posted March 13th 2009 2:15AM
posted March 13th 2009 2:15AM
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Sony stuffs are expensive, but I don't think they make as much as Apple in terms of net profit.
Anyway, my question is, why the hell is the plant still operating? It should have been closed 10 or more years ago.
LOL
Loving the mime theme.
I feel a little for the french, but only a little because after all they did invent the mime, didn't they.
Marcel Marceau ftw!!!
I will not release zi president till we get a psp2!
hehehe
First, sorry if my english isn't perfect.
Just to give a bot more of informations. It is actually a plant that was mainly producing vhs tape. so if they don't have anything else to do, obviously te closure can't be a surprise.
The employees decision to hold their boss in hostage comes from the fact it seems other workers, in other sony plants, got better compensation when their plants closed. I know to many of you, taking the boss in hostage seems completely stupid, on the other hand, France has a history of, sometimes quite violent, social fights between blue collar workers and their bosses. And the idea here is not in any way to threat the life of the president of Sony France. But, if they hadn't done this, the plant would have closed without no one noticeing. Now, they get the medias attention and can tell out loud what they want, hoping that to avoid some sort of PR disaster, Sony will accept to give them better compensations.
So I know, strikes and such kind of things are seen in a bad way in the US and in many countries outside of France. Our culture here is different, those hard strikes are what led us to have a better social system. But since the 80's, and a change of scenario, as the big companys have started to take back what they gave, those same strike haven't been to gain protection, better working conditions and such, but more to try not to lose too much.
I'm not hoping to convince anyone here that what Sony employees are doing is legit, but just to help understand a bit of the french culture on this subject.
He its same in Quebec, there is (1 or 2 time per years) sabotage made by blue colars and syndicates. They still live in the 70'..!
Hehe, US people must think we are hardcore communists!!
Now I live in japan, no syndicate here, but at least companies have a sens of honor. We get the best public services in all the world, no kidding. With unions in Quebec, workers get lazy in no time. They dont care, they cant get fired.
Don't you DARE compare the FRENCH to the garbage that is Quebec...
THEY ARE NOT THE SAME AND QUEBEC DOES NOT SPEAK FRENCH! they speak some garbage low class trash!
heu... yeah, you right!
I'm french and I've grown up very close to where this plant is. So I'll give you the complete story.
It's not a very rich place in France, and this plant back in the 80s brought up to 500 jobs. It was really important there.
The authorities here (ie: the state) gave a lot of money (de-taxing) to Sony to put their plant there.
There was a real technical knowledge, and they made awesome video tapes for years.
But now that the video tape market is going down, and dying, Sony, instead of trying to use this plant to make something else (I repeat, there are really smart people there) CDs, DVDs, whathever, they decide to close the plant. And they don't seem to care much.
The people that work there won't ever (or will hardly) find another job in the region again. The money the state invested (my money) is lost. And Sony doesn't care.That's what upset people. That's what upset me.
When they say they are holding the boss in hostage, you can be sure he doesn't have a gun pointed at him. He's only in a locked office until the press get interested. It happens sometimes during strikes, seldomly, and unlike you people seem to think, it works, because when the press is there, people listen.
I hope I helped people understanding what's going on there.
+1
Giving people tax breaks is not giving money away.
It's pretty much the same here in USA except it's called false imprisonment and you got to jail instead.
Reminds me the situation, when Nokia was going to close it`s plant in Germany. But there people just were killin` the phones on public.
Sorry my Enlish too :)
They were manufacturing video tapes and they blocked the door with tree trunks? I'm going to assume that this is a slip-up, and this story is actually an archive post from the late stone age.
What would you use to block a door... your Iphone?
Probably being shut down for having no fire escapes.
"Summer of Rage"... bring it on!
Oh my...
seriously, I know that not everyone here is a native English speaker, but I have a funny feeling that most of the people making these mistakes are, since the people saying they are French seem to have better literacy skills than the rest...half of these posts are unintelligible!
There- location pronoun
Their- possessive plural
They're- contraction of "they are"
Were- past participle of "to be" (or rarely, man as in werewolf)
Where- location pronoun
We're- contraction of "we are"
and finally, iGoon- seriously dude, read a post before getting angry about it...they make pills for that now!
I'm no Sony fan, far from it... but I do own a new Vaio and an old PSP and all this Sony-hating is just vivid fanboyism.
Find me another laptop w/ built in Blu ray, HDMI output, 17inch and 4GB of ram for $1,000. Go, now. Build one on Dell. Build one on Alienware. You can't even get BD on a Mac. Are Vaio's good for gaming? Hell no, but I'm not trying to play Crysis. My only complaint about my Vaio is I wish it had a better/dedicated graphics processor and built in Dolby (not that faking-the-funk Dolby software). Yeah, I could have bought Alienware that does ALL of that and more... for twice the price of my Vaio.
Xbox vs Wii vs PS3 is just getting old at this point. No one cares except for you dumb fanboys. Do I own a PS3? No. Do I know anyone who does? No. Do I or anyone I know expressed interest in getting one? No. So I guess because my microscopic piece of the Earth doesn't care about PS3, that must make it a failure. Thats such bullshit. The Haters are just as bad as Fanboys... we need to lock you all in a room full of ball-peen hammers and dildoes so you can finish each other off and STFU.
Man, I hate when they leave out the full story.
They totally failed to report the part about how the guy held everyone hostage with a baguette and how they finally calmed him down using sweet sounds of Euro-techno-club music.
One hostage replied that he was just glad that it didn't affect how big the logo was on his extra small Armani Exchange t-shirt.
Viva la.... oh, I really don't care. Fuck France.
lol typical union behavior