06 October 2005
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HP may give in to goverment blackmail according to this AFP article and decide to reduce the number of job cuts it makes in France, although I'm guessing that the "keeping" of the jobs will be done at the same time as there is a complete and utter crack down on all and any perks (ticket restaurant, company cars etc.), no training budget, a total lack of pay rises for anyone who is employed by HP under a French contract and a refusal to hire anyone to replace anyone who leaves for any reason. Furthermore I expect that HP will move anything critical in trems of R&D or manufacturing out of France in the very near future leaving the French employees to man help desks in French and other tedious and generally non-critical sorts of work. I'm sure HP has some French employees that it values, I'm guessing they will be told that they might like to relocate if they want a pay rise, the rest will just be given one cruddy job after another until they quitBusinesses nutty enough to locate in France in the past can’t even adjust to market realities without the government intervening and attempting to intimidate...
What bizzyblog fails to note is that this is of course not the first time in (extremely) recent history where attempts to rationalize businesses in France end up being stymied - at the end of August Nestlé also found this out.