A few dozen workers at Pithiviers took turns
standing guard Wednesday outside factory offices where the director of
3M’s French operations, Luc Rousselet, has been holed up since Tuesday.
The workers did not threaten any violence and the atmosphere was calm.A
few police officers stood outside, while workers inside exchanged jokes
and worries about their future amid heaps of empty plastic coffee cups
and boxes of cookies.Talks among 3M workers and management resumed
Wednesday mediated by a local labor official. Rousselet was not taking
part. Workers want better severance packages for those being laid off
and better conditions for those keeping their jobs.

In France,
it is not unheard-of for striking workers to hold company executives as
a way of winning concessions from management. The hostages are almost
never injured. A similar situation ended peacefully earlier this month
at Sony’s French facilities.”We don’t have any other ammunition” other
than hostage-taking, said Laurent Joly, who has worked at the
Pithiviers plant for 11 years and is angry that he is being transferred
to another French site.”I really have the impression that we no longer
exist for these people,” Genevieve Camus, who has worked for the plant
for 35 years, said of the company’s U.S. management.The Maplewood,
Minnesota-based 3M is also planning job cuts at facilities in the
United States and other developed nations.The 3M workers at Pithiviers
have been on strike since Friday. Hamon said Rousselet was blocked from
leaving the factory Tuesday after arriving from 3M France headquarters
near Paris.

Store owners in Pithiviers were shutting down early
on Wednesday to support the factory workers.When Rousselet came out of
the guarded office to go to the bathroom Wednesday, workers booed him
while reporters asked how he was holding up.”Everything’s fine,” he
said.Workers planned to bring Rousselet mussels and french fries for
dinner if he was still there Wednesday night.

In Paris, an acrid
plume of black smoke from burning tires wafted mere blocks from
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Elysee Palace. It was a clear signal that
French labor unrest over the state of the euro zone’s second-largest
economy had taken an ugly turn for the worse.Faced with what it calls
the collapse of the European auto market, Germany’s Continental
recently announced plans to close the plant in Clairoix, northeast of
Paris, in 2010.”We shouldn’t let this company close down, otherwise it
means that all these robber bosses can do whatever they want to,” said
Antonio Da Costa, a union representative.