Word: unioneers
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...shortage of qualified people. Indians and Filipinos are most in demand on international vessels because they speak English. But many Indian seafarers are now refusing to do the Gulf of Aden run. "Sailors are very apprehensive, very jerky," says Sunil Nair, spokesman for the Mumbai-based National Union of Seafarers of India (NUSI), which has some 80,000 members. He says that since the spate of hijackings last year - when there were 72 attacks and 52 hijackings - more sailors who switch companies are trying to "join ones that don't do that run." (See pictures of dramatic rescues of pirate...
...flotilla of some 500 boats that had blocked the ports of Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk since Tuesday weren't protesting the recession as such, but rather European Union fishing quotas that the fishermen claim further undermine already slumping business. Still, their move to bring trans-Channel traffic to a creep - and shut down ferry service altogether - paralleled similarly muscular action by workers across France who have taken the law into their own hands to protect their jobs. (See pictures of France on fire...
...last month alone, employees and union officials have held no less than five company CEOs captive after they had announced major staff cuts or plant closures. On March 31, PPR president Fran?ois-Henri Pinault had to be rescued by police after outraged staff surrounded his car following the disclosure of 1,200 job eliminations throughout his distribution group. Such exceptional French acts of intimidation didn't begin with the current recession. Bossnappings have been occurring sporadically in France in response to major staff cuts since 2000, after having been central to frequent factory occupations by radical labor unions...
...occupation of airport runways by striking Air France workers to stop flights for days, and the paralysis of French highways by protesting truck drivers. Similar dismay resounded abroad at images of French farmers, angered by the import of cheaper goods, capturing trucks from the U.K., Spain, and other European Union countries and dumping or burning their cargo - which often included live animals...
...Ironically, the weakness of French unions also explains their explosiveness. Less than 8% of French workers belong to a union - a figured dwarfed by averages elsewhere in Europe and even by America's relatively low 14% level. Worse still, small French unions are bitterly divided among themselves and tend to be dislocated from sector to sector. The result, Groux says, is French management often ignores them while preparing for layoffs and remains high-handed once negotiating begins. All that, he says, increases the allure and utility of insurrectional action - and pushes the limits of dramatic protest over time...