24 April, 2012

Technicolor Angers factory relocated in Brasil : an unforeseen effect of the working time share

The news could could recall April 1st because it looks like a joke but it is not. It's even a sad news. The Technicolor site of Angers would be, according to trade unions, relocated in... Brasil! A simple closing would probably have been less painful. But, because of the costs of the manufacture of decoders in Angers which would be now to high, Technicolor has decided to go away. 

With that departure, it's a symbol of the industrial past of the city which is going to disappear. If, in the global economy, goods, machines and of course capital are mobile, employees, above all if they are senior and rooted in their city, are not so. The wind of globalisation take away their factory.

The ideological politicy of sharing of the working time, implemented in France first by the right political side, then by the left, which made it compulsory (with the support of trade unions), has an unpredicted meaning. French employees, who saw the cost of their work to soar as the working time decreased, produce goods which prices are not compatible with the purchasing power of the consumers. 

The sharing of the working time will be in fact a total transfer of that time to poorer people eager to get work. That kind of sharing had probably not been foreseen. The reduction of working time was in fact a total suppression of it. In times of election in France, Angers people should think about that.

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