The bitten are biting back by ‘boss-napping’

By Adrian Askew

It was only a matter of time but we shouldn’t be surprised at the upsurge in boss-napping – a feature of French industrial relations which could become our latest import.

Many commentators, including Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times, are now calling at last, the end of Thatcherism. Some of us may have thought that the final spasms of the Thatcherite doctrine were last detected in May 1997 but sadly, it found new life in an under-regulated and rampant financial services industry which spread its influence and culture across whole swaths of the economy. Bosses became emboldened, trade unions continued to be marginalised and workers became just “human resources”. Beyond the headlines about Fred the Shred and his sumptuous pension plan were many thousands of cases where management by bullying and breathtaking hubris were the order of the day. Understandable, I suppose, when the so-called Masters of the Universe were being praised to the rafters by political leaders of all parties while the banks and businesses that they ran were teetering on the edge of the abyss.

Well, the bitten are biting back and this is showing itself in many different and interesting ways. Workers, stung by broken promises about secure employment and the end of boom and bust, are rediscovering collective action as an effective defence. Membership of many unions, including my own, is growing and as a gesture of defiance, many more trade union members are putting their heads above the ramparts and getting involved – by becoming union learning reps, health and safety experts or good, old fashioned shop stewards. Working people can see the injustice of a system which rewards abject failure at the top and punishes “generally satisfactory” at the bottom – and they are prepared to do something about it.

Which brings me to bossnapping. Yes, a truly French response to factory closures and job cuts whether in UK owned Scape, American owned Caterpillar or the Japanese company, Sony. I’m sure there must be French owned companies involved as well but for some reason they don’t seem to attract the same publicity. Now, I’m not condoning bossnapping as a viable tactic. Far from it – it doesn’t seem to achieve much and the job cuts and closures frequently appear to go ahead anyway. Nevertheless, it ill-behoves senior executives to complain so bitterly about being held for a few days or hours in the works canteen when the workers they employed have, for so long, been on the receiving end of poor leadership, amateur management and a short term financial landgrab.

No, let’s not condone bossnapping – think hard and you start to understand it.