The head of US tire maker Titan International launched a blunt attack on French productivity. He told the government that some French workers “work only three hours a day” and his company would be “stupid” to consider taking over a factory in the country.
The remarks of Titan’s CEO, Maurice Taylor, addressed in a letter to Arnaud Montebourg, the French industry minister, is set to relaunch debate over France’s declining competitiveness. This has been made far worse in recent months by the socialistic high tax policies of President François Hollande that are destroying France as a modern nation. In this letter dated 2/8/2013, published in Wednesday’s edition of Les Echos, in response to Montebourg’s approach to Titan to take over a French company, Mr Taylor writes: “The French workforce gets paid high wages but work only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!”
The communist-backed CGT French union last year opposed a possible Titan takeover. Mr Taylor wrote: “How stupid do you think we are.” Mr Taylor went further calling the communist union “crazy”. He wrote: “Goodyear tried for over four years to save part of the Amiens jobs that are some of the highest paid, but the French unions and the French government did nothing but talk.”
France is in serious trouble. Its labor force on a majority has indeed been the most socialistic in Europe measuring on a average basis. Mr Montebourg’s approach has been asking the EU to take a tougher stance on trade protection to shut down cheap imports from Asian economies. France has to learn the same bitter lessons of Russia and China. Marxism does not work.
