Laid-off French workers threaten to blow up factory for redundancy pay

Outside the car parts factory, a group of burly petanque players laughed and joked as their metal boules clinked in the late afternoon sunshine. It would have been a pleasantly tranquil French scene - except for the improvised bomb that stood ready behind them.

Constructed by the players from a row of gas canisters connected together by electric cable, and positioned on top of a high voltage transformer to create maximum effect, the bomb is designed to blow up the long, white building where the men had worked for years - along with millions of euros worth of parts and equipment.

It is ready and waiting for the end of the month, they say, if their demand for redundancy money is not met before then.

"We are not terrorists or revolutionaries," one machine tool operator insisted between puffs on a Gitane cigarette, as he watched his redundant colleagues pitch their boules.

"We have to defend our rights. We are angry, but nobody will get hurt. We are losing our jobs, and we just want compensation from Renault."

At stake are their mortgages, beach holidays and a lifestyle in a beautiful region better known for goats' cheese and red wine than bomb threats and industrial strife.

Their fellow townspeople at Chatellerault, 190 miles south west of Paris, are mostly behind the 366 unemployed workers who have become notorious since they set up home-made bombs a week ago, catching the attention of a nation desperately worried about job insecurity.

"Of course what they are doing is extreme, but they are in an extreme position," said one supporter, who did not want to give his name, in the town square. "If they do nothing they will get nothing. We understand that."

Asked if they were doing something criminal, the former workers simply give Gallic shrugs.

The French, with their long revolutionary tradition, have always been more inclined to take direct action than their Anglo-Saxon neighbours - or, indeed, most other countries of Europe.

For years workers have blockaded roads and ports, set fire to lorries full of livestock, or blown up tankers carrying wine as "wine terrorists" did last year, to protest at cheap imports.

Earlier this year, laid-off workers in a handful of other factories embarked on "boss-napping", seizing managers and refusing to set them free until better redundancy deals were secured. No workers have been prosecuted, despite the clear breach of the law.

Thousands of Frenchmen regard it as unexceptional to take the law into their own hands to defend what they regard as their rights.

Student marches conclude with cobblestones being ripped up and thrown at police. Rail strikes are enhanced by sabotaging the lines. Now workers are making violent new threats to try to secure what they feel is rightfully theirs - in defiance of President Nicolas Sarkozy's more free-market minded government.

And across France, others are watching the boules-players of Chatellerault, to see how effective they are.

They took over the factory last month soon after it shut down, daubing it with graffiti castigating Renault and PSA Peugot-Citroen - the carmakers that were the factory's main customers - and erecting crosses on the grass outside to signify the death of their jobs.

Until last year their employer, New Fabris, a small French firm, was a success story, making engine components and axles for cars such as Lagunas and Meganes in the 22,000 square metre factory.

It employed nearly 700, including casual staff; but then the downturn began to bite, with carmakers particularly badly hit. By early summer the order book was empty and New Fabris was in receivership.

Now the company is in “legal liquidation” so the equipment in the factory belongs to the receiver and the French state.

The company, which still has an office, did not return calls made by The Sunday Telegraph.

Most employees were paid around 4,000 euros each in redundancy - equal to a couple of months pay.

The workers have been making parts for France's big firms for years, so they argue that the big companies should pay them redundancy money – even though by law, since the workers were employed by an independent contractor, the carmakers have no such responsibility.

At the site, on an industrial estate, the police are nowhere to be seen, and the only response by the authorities has been to order the local fire brigade to beef up its capability.

"Don't think it's a bluff," said an ex-employee who would only give his name as Noel. "We want a deal by July 31 and we are angry. Otherwise, just you wait and see what happens."

Next to the petanque ground was evidence that they meant business in the form of a tangled pile of burnt-out machines, dragged out of the factory and set on fire to make a point.

Guy Eyermann of the far-left CGT Union, a gnarled ex-paratrooper who now leads the force of middle-aged French men and a few women who are preparing to blow up their old workplace, said they had been driven to such an extreme.

"This closure is a catastrophe, a human disaster for people with bills and mortgages to pay, and the car companies are using the economic crisis as a chance to restructure," he said. "On 31 July we will leave the keys and go. After that, don't be surprised if the factory goes up in flames."

Inside the plant are machines which the workers say Renault owns, including a sophisticated robotic machine tool which they said was worth (Euros) 2 million.

They want a (Euros)30,000 (£26,000) payoff for each redundant worker, although the value of what has been left in the factory is much less than the total compensation they seek.

So far there is not much sign that anybody is listening. Asked by The Sunday Telegraph what it proposed to do about the workers at Chatelleraut, Renault gave the corporate equivalent of its own Gallic shrug.

"It is an unfortunate situation but we have done everything we could for that company," said Gita Roux, a spokesman. "People are buying fewer cars and the whole auto sector is in crisis, there is less need for car parts.

"These people are demanding a redundancy package which is over and above what they are entitled to in French law. It is not for us to do that, we did not employ them. It is for the state to step in. And if they become violent, we don't think that is going to change our position."

Yet other French workers appear to like what they see. On Wednesday, laid-off staff at a second factory, nearer to Paris, also threatened to blow up their workplace with gas canisters if they weren't paid compensation, raising fears that Chatelleraut's boule-playing bomb-makers had set a new trend.

On Friday, staff at a third such factory - a manufacturing firm near Bordeuax - were told that their identical threat, made just the previous day, had borne almost instantaneous fruit, winning a Euros 30,000 redundancy package.

The reason may be the particularly angry mood of workers across France right now, with the economy in its worst state since the 1940s - and bosses blamed for the bonus culture that took hold this side of the Channel as well as in Britain.

Earlier this summer, cinema-goers flocked to watch and cheer at Marie-Louise, a comedy about laid-off women workers who hire a hitman for their boss.

The former workers at Chatelleraut make an unlikely bunch of would-be bombers and arsonists in an unlikely setting; amiable, and mostly over 40, they have cherished families and comfortable homes in this picturesque region of rolling fields full of sunflowers. They look forward to their trips to the sea and worry about their mortgages and their children's education.

Muriel, who would not give her surname, a 40-year-old mother of two who lives in a cottage in a pretty village outside Chatelleraut, said: "At first I was sad about losing a job and the friends I have here.

"But now I am worried about losing my home. It will not be easy to get another job. There won't be any holidays or treats for my children for a while. Life will be difficult."

A few months ago she would never have dreamed of threatening to blow up her workplace, she said, but like the other workers she was angry enough to do it. "We have to do something, and really what else can we do?" she said. "We worked hard for them, and look at how we were treated."