There is a journalistic truism that one incident is not necessarily news, and two may be a coincidence, but three similar developments indicate a trend. One particularly scary trend recently: workers holding their bosses hostage to demand better severance.

In France, it’s become a high-profile tactic for industrial labor negotiation: lock up factory managers for a day or two to force them to return to the negotiating table in a more compliant manner.

The French today are in a rebellious mood, and an outbreak of “bossnapping” — or workers taking their bosses hostage — is yet a new twist in the country’s rich tradition of protest.

Angry over plans to shut down U.S.-owned auto parts supplier Molex, workers in southern France have barricaded two managers inside their plant since yesterday. Union activists decided to hold two managers after a meeting called to discuss some 300 layoffs ended in disagreement.

Last Thursday, more than 100 workers fearing layoffs at a logistics firm in northeast France held five bosses to press for negotiations. By midnight, the workers at FM Logistic had let all the managers leave after securing a promise for a senior executive to bring new proposals on redundancy talks to the table on Friday.

Over the past two months, French workers have taken several bosses captive to demand better compensation packages for job losses, despite a threat by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to put a stop to the practice.

“Four managers held hostage for 24 hours at a Caterpillar bulldozer plant were released on April 1, after the company offered to reopen talks on layoffs under mediation by the state,” Agence France-Presse reported. “Employees at the Caterpillar factory in the southeastern city of Grenoble barricaded their bosses inside an office on March 31 after talks between management and 733 workers facing redundancy broke down.”

Also this month, workers at an adhesives factory, owned by Scapa, in France held three executives and a manager captive over plans to close down the site down.

In late March, the head of electronics giant Sony’s French operations was held hostage over night by angry employees, protesting the terms of their severance package. Soon after, French workers held hostage for more than 24 hours a supply chain director at a 225-person factory run by U.S. Scotch-tape manufacturer 3M.

In February, workers at a factory of tire maker Michelin held two managers hostage overnight. Executives at tire manufacturer Continental escaped the same fate by “slipping out of a side door while staff performed a mock execution,” according to the UK Times; a few hundred workers at a German-owned plant went on a rampage after a court rejected their bid to halt the factory from shutting down with the loss of 1,100 jobs.

Employees of Préciturn, a small engineering company, occupied a branch of RBS in central France after being told that their jobs were in jeopardy in January. Two senior bank executives were forced to sleep on an office floor and, in the morning, caved and signed a check to lend the employer more money to keep the company in business. Still, there were some redundancies.

“Most have got their way,” the Times says.

Sarkozy has promised to stop to this fast-spreading practice of bossnapping, or “sequestering” as the hostage-takers prefer to call it.

“We can understand that people are angry, but this anger will subside with answers and results, not by aggravating matters with actions that are contrary to the law,” BBC News reports the French president as having said.

Public anger over job cuts and bonuses has been more widespread in France than in the U.S., where public rage is aimed largely at high-ranking figures in the financial services sector.

In a poll this month by the IFOP survey group for Paris Match magazine, 30 percent said they “approved of taking managers hostage.” Another 63 percent said they “understood but don’t approve.” Only 7 percent said they “condemned” the practice. A separate poll taken a few days earlier by survey group CSA showed 45 percent approved of bossnapping.

“You have to put this in context of the crisis of factory shutdowns, the strong hike in unemployment that we have witnessed these last months,” along with reports of golden parachutes and executive bonuses that have enraged many French, the Washington Times quoted Jerome Fourquet, deputy director of public opinion studies at IFOP, as having said.

A New York Times article on growing unrest in parts of Europe quoted a psychotherapist at Harley Therapy in London:

“People are looking for someone to blame as they feel the crisis on a day-to-day basis and experience feelings of injustice and anger as they ask themselves, ‘What have I done to contribute to this?’” said Sheri Jacobson, a psychotherapist who is clinical director of Harley Therapy in London. “For those who are the target of the scorn it’s extremely difficult, because for a long time they were the champions and they worked hard, and they also look at the situation, saying, ‘My intentions were good.’”

The high percentage of French workers finding such actions understandable may be in part because the bosses held hostage are fed and physically unharmed.

“These non-violent and largely symbolic incidents differ from pirate attacks off the African coast, kidnappings in Mexico or other terrorist threats to American business interests abroad,” the Chicago Tribune says. “The goal of French hostage-taking is to express anger and force concessions from employers whom workers believe already have settled on cutbacks.

“No surprise, the targeted companies object,” the Tribune continues.

The fact that none of the situations seem to have taken a violent turn so far doesn’t make them any less alarming or illegal.

“We have the rule of law, and I will not let matters go on like that,” Sarkozy said on April 7, after employees of the British-owned adhesives factory took several managers hostage to protest the plant’s possible closure. “I am insisting the police and courts arrest and prosecute those workers who take the law into their own hands in this way.”

Is this an acceptable way to negotiate a better severance package, or is this a more frightening trend for a country already suffering from a reputation of industrial unrest?

Resources

French Workers Hold Two Managers at Auto Parts Plant
by Agence France-Presse, April 21, 2009

French Workers Free Detained Bosses at Logistics Firm
by Gilbert Reilhac
Reuters, April 16, 2009

Sarkozy Tells French: No More ‘Bossnappings’
Agence France-Presse, April 8, 2009

French Workers Release Caterpillar Bosses
by Mie Kohiyama
Agence France-Presse, April 1, 2009

British Managers Held in French ‘Bossnapping’
Agence France-Presse, April 7, 2009

Sacked French Workers Free 3M Manager
CNN, March 26, 2009

Angry French Workers Turn to ‘Bossnapping’ to Solve Their Problems
The Times, April 4, 2009

French Workers Release UK Bosses
BBC News, April 8, 2009

French Workers Take Bosses Hostage
by Elizabeth Bryant
The Washington Times, April 17, 2009

Almost Half of French Approve of Locking up Bosses
Reuters, April 7, 2009

Hurt by Economy, Europeans Vent Their Anger
by Julia Werdigier and Matthew Saltmarsh
The New York Times, March 25, 2009

France Boss Kidnappings: Workers Considering Hostage-Taking … Part of Labor Negotiations
by Greg Burns
The Chicago Tribune, April 22, 2009