Managers are supposed to be good at giving and receiving “feedback”. To help make this a reality the “open door policy” has many fans. So what to make of the action by workers at Michelin’s tyre factory in Toul in north-eastern France, where feedback consisted of the doors being shut on two senior HR managers, who were then held hostage for three days in protest at the company’s plans to close the plant?

This startling intervention by militant trade unionists raises two important questions. First, how long does an HR manager have to be held captive before anyone notices that he or she is missing? And second, did the terms of this imprisonment allow for the usual three-course lunch to be served?

There are, I suppose, other questions we could consider here as well, such as “are we entering a new era of muscular trade union activism?”, or “is the employer-employee relationship in the developed world bound to come under ever-increasing strain?”

The history of industrial relations weighs heavily on managers and employees alike. A collective folk memory is at work here, often at a subconscious level. Even as we try to look ahead and focus on future challenges, the tug of the past brings us back. As in other kinds of relationships, cumulative experience counts for a lot and colours judgments made today.

Which is all a rather grand way of saying that bosses are often on the look-out for signs of a resurgence of worker unrest – although actually getting locked in their own offices is probably not something they expect. You have to hand it to the French: it is a fine demonstration of how to make the element of surprise work for you.

But British unions are proving to be no slouches when it comes to finding new ways of putting pressure on employers. The newly merged super-union Unite has launched a “cyber-attack” on Marks and Spencer, to draw attention to what it calls “widespread discrimination in the treatment of workers” in the company’s meat supply chain. The union says it has been telling M&S about a “two-tier workforce” for over a year. Damaging tension has been created between migrant and indigenous workers, Unite says. Last Wednesday, anyone searching for M&S’s website via Google found an advertisement popping up on their computer screens, inviting customers to “look behind the label” of the apparently innocent meat and poultry products nestling in the chill cabinet of their nearest store. This was a case of “using virtual reality to highlight the actual reality”, the union said.

As it turned out, the campaign proved to be a bit more virtual than the union had anticipated, as M&S was protected by Google’s rules for advertisers. After a few hours the “do no evil” corporation intervened, and Unite’s ad no longer appeared after any search for M&S.

Might today’s nervous business climate provoke more union action? In the past managers have relied on economic downturns and the massed ranks of the unemployed to exert downward pressure on employees’ expectations, and thus maintain industrial peace. The downturn of 2008 does not seem to be working in the same way. John Monks, the leader of the European trade union confederation, will be leading a traditional (off-line) protest at the EU finance ministers’ meeting in Slovenia in April, calling for higher pay for Europe’s workers. Last week, Mr Monks warned that this campaign had been launched “in some anger and in real commitment”. Elsewhere in France there has been another manager lock-in incident – this time involving a British manager at a Unilever ice-cream factory – and even a hunger strike by nine workers at Electricité de France.

Unions have widened their repertoire when it comes to choosing how to fight their corner. The long, drawn-out strike is much rarer than it was. Targeted, hit-and-run action is more effective and less punishing financially to trade union members. In the US, a presidential election year is forcing candidates to listen to unions and crank up their pro-worker (and anti-free trade) rhetoric. Barack Obama has taken to referring to “patriot employers” – the ones who do not offshore jobs. I have said it before, and it remains true: management gets the unions it deserves. (Some readers may feel that no manager deserves French unions.) But when BAA’s “head of people and change” at its Heathrow Terminal Five site was quoted describing a union-free environment as “nirvana” – the usual corporate denials were issued after the words were published – the company can hardly have been surprised by the anger of its staff.

And when the Michelin HR managers were released from captivity a few days ago they were met by a silent protest from their employees, who turned to present their backs to their bosses. One Michelin worker said: “We turned our backs on the management because it has been turning its back on us for at least four years.”

Unless you have eyes in the back of your head, I would advise you not to turn your back on trade unionists and other staff at the moment. You never know where the next attack could be coming from. Look your colleagues in the eye and deal with them face-to-face. And don’t forget that spare toothbrush for the bottom drawer.

March 4th, 2008 in Layoffs, Unions | Permalink