In the workers' opinion, the best way to make their demands heard is to blow up (as in explode, set on fire, make a big mess of the place) the facility they are currently working in. And this is no feat of two or three hooligans mixed with the rest of the good, hard working employees, but a very well drafted, military-style plan set in place by the GTC union.
"Gas bottles have already been placed in various parts of the factory and are connected to each other. If Renault and PSA refuse to give us that money it could blow up before the end of the month," CGT union official Guy Eyermann told France Info radio.
"We are not going to let PSA and Renault wait until August or September to recover the spare parts and machines still in the factory," he warned. "If we get nothing, they get nothing at all."
The New Fabris workers will not limit themselves at waiting for a Nord-Ost like standoff, with them holding hostage car parts worth some 2 million euro on one side and Renault-PSA representatives playing the role of Russian Spetsnaz forces on the other.
The union said it has already sent an expeditionary force, comprised of "two coachloads of workers" to Peugeot's HQ last week and will do the same this week with Renault and even the French employment ministry. Not to beat some sense into them, at least for now, but to try and force their hand into giving in to the demands.
It is not the first time automotive industry workers have tried to use more than persuasive means to reach their goals. Continental workers stormed a management meeting in March using high caliber...eggs, while no later than the first of this month, Ssangyong employees (900 of them, armed with God knows what), forced the entrance in the facility. Aftermath: 80 people injured.
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