U.S. Tycoon Savages Work-shy French Workers

LONDON â€" Many in France are bristling over a letter from Maurice M. Taylor, the American tire tycoon, describing French employees as underworked and overpaid.

Writing to a government minister to explain why he would not step in to save a tire factory threatened with closure in northern France, Mr. Taylor, the chief executive of Illinois-based Titan International, recalled visiting the factory: “The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours.

“They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three, and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!”

Mr. Taylor, who glories in a Wall Street nickname â€" The Grizz â€" that reflects his tough negotiating style, was writing to Arnaud Montebourg, France’s minister for industrial renewal, to explain why he would not be stepping in to savethe doomed Goodyear plant in the northern town of Amiens.

“How stupid do you think we are” he asked the minister in the February 8 letter, a facsimile of which was published on Tuesday by Les Echos, the French business daily.

His blast touched a raw nerve in France, where both politicians and the press are sensitive to Anglo-Saxon lectures about the country’s alleged anti-business culture.

“Virulent”, “unbelievable” and “incendiary” were among the adjectives used by the French press to describe Mr. Taylor’s missive in which he told Mr. Montebourg:

“You’re a politician so you don’t want to rock the boat. The Chinese are shipping tires into France - really all over Europe - and yet you do nothing.”

Mr. Taylor, a former welder who made a self-financed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, had already ruffled French feathers back in December when he said he was pulling out of a possible Amiens deal.

Referring to the regulatory barriers Titan had faced, he attacked France’s business practices as “screwed up” and said “only a non-business person would understand the French labor rules.”

France’s Socialist government nevertheles continued to see Mr. Taylor as a potential white knight who would take over at least the profitable part of Goodyear’s operations in Amiens, where workers have waged a five-year campaign to keep the plant open.

Titan’s potential involvement received a hostile reception from France’s General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.), which demanded a five-year guarantee of continuing production. Goodyear said late last month it planned to close the loss-making plant, costing more than 1,000 jobs.

Daniel Schneidermann, a columnist for the @rrêt sur images Web site, said on Wednesday, “The Grizz doesn’t care whether he’s loved or hated. He reveals globalization in its true colors. He does it a thousand times better than all Michael Moore’s movies. Thank you, the Grizz.”