Tyres Burn in Paris as Conti Protests Continue

The air around the Place de la Bourse in central Paris, previously home to the French stock market, was heavy with the stench of burning tyres on May 18. Hundreds of Continental employees, together with representatives from the CGT union, congregated at the historic trading site and vented their emotions ahead of planned talks on the closure of Conti’s Clairoix factory.

“The bourse is the symbol of the global crisis. It’s where people have for years speculated with the sweat of workers, and this is the result,” CGT union representative Xavier Mathieu told reporters. “They gambled, they lost, there’s a crisis, but we won’t pay for them.” The tyre burning Continental employees were joined in their demonstration by workers from another closure threatened factory, a facility producing car seats for PSA.

Company management and union representatives are due to meet in Frankfurt on May 19 to negotiate the Clairoix factory’s closure, scheduled for 2010. Reuters also reports that sources ‘close to the company’ indicate Continental’s management and unions have arrived at a compromise for the tyre factory in Hanover, Germany, originally slated for closure along with the Clairoix works. In place of closing the factory outright, the shorter working hours already in place will be extended for the time being and then re-evaluated in 2010. Details of this plan are to be released on May 19, the sources added.