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.

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