2nd UPDATE: French Workers Release Caterpillar Bosses
(Updates with union urging Obama's intervention)
GRENOBLE, France (AFP)--French workers Wednesday released four managers held hostage for 24 hours at a Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) bulldozer plant, after the U.S. firm offered to reopen talks on layoffs under mediation by the state.
Employees at the Caterpillar factory in the southeastern city of Grenoble barricaded their bosses inside an office on Tuesday after talks between management and 733 workers facing redundancy broke down.
Factory director Nicolas Polutnik was set free along with the head of personnel and two other managers. A fifth executive, the human resources director who suffers from heart problems, had been allowed to leave Tuesday.
Hecklers shouted out "Resign!" while some 400 workers booed and whistled as the executives were driven from the site, headed for the regional labor office where the talks with unions are to take place.
Their release came after President Nicolas Sarkozy moved to defuse the situation by offering in a radio interview to meet union leaders from the plant to hear their demands.
"I will save the site," Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio. "I will meet the union leaders since, if I understand right, they called for my help and I understand this. I won't let them down."
A CGT union representative called on Sarkozy to ask U.S. President Barack Obama, when he meets him in London at Thursday's G20 summit, to intervene with the U.S. boss of Caterpillar to improve lay-off terms.
"Mr. Sarkozy can perhaps influence Obama, so that he can then influence Jim Owens," said Pierre Piccarreta.
Wide-ranging negotiations resumed Wednesday on a possible cut in the number of redundancies, compensation for laid-off staff and the long-term future of the Grenoble operations.
Caterpillar workers were demanding a minimum of EUR30,000 in severance pay, much more than the EUR10,000 Caterpillar was offering as minimum compensation.
The CGT's Piccarreta said the talks would involve representatives from Caterpillar's European and U.S. headquarters and French state officials.
He said Caterpillar had already put an offer of compensation on the table for staff forced into part-time work, and would pay workers for the three days spent on strike - which he called a "historic" gesture.
Polutnik told reporters at the plant that Caterpillar had agreed to the unions' demand for payment for time on strike "as a gesture of appeasement."
"There is a condition, which is for the site to be evacuated, for us to be free to come and go as we please, and for the strike order to be lifted to allow negotiations to go ahead," he said.
He didn't confirm the offer of special compensation for part-timers.
