Who in Their Right Mind Would Do Business in France? (HP Laying Off 1,200 Is a Near-National Crisis)

Businesses nutty enough to locate in France in the past can’t even adjust to market realities without the government intervening and attempting to intimidate, which in the short run may be working with Hewlett Packard (bolds are mine):

Hewlett-Packard ready to cut French job cuts

PARIS, Oct 3 (AFP) – Hewlett-Packard is ready to reduce 1,240 job cuts in France, the company said in a newspaper interview on Monday following strong political pressure against the restructuring.

The chief executive of Hewlett Packard in France, Patrick Starck, told the French daily business paper La Tribune: “We are open to negotiating, and seriously, not just for a few dozen jobs.”

French prime minister Dominique de Villepin had implied last week that the company would reduce the number of planned job cuts in France after discussions with the government.

Under the original plan, Hewlett-Packard had announced plans to cut 6,000 jobs in Europe, with 1,240 redundancies intended for France. The planned cuts in France provoked indignation among trades unions and also in political circles.

Starck told the newspaper that France was an important market for the company, its third-biggest in Europe, but that the Hewlett Packard group, being a global business, had to adjust to anticipate changes in demand.

Other related stories listed at the same link:

• French HP Workers to Strike after Layoffs (THAT will make HP want to stay, won’t it?)
• EU to Consider Aid If HP Cuts Jobs (looking to provide even more aid to displaced workers than HP’s severance package and France’s unemployment system will undoubtedly provide)
• France Could Ask HP to Pay Back State Subsidies (depending on their nature and promises HP may have made, I may have some sympathy for this, but the linked article lacks specifics, and the next one below chalks it up to “posturing”)
• Moving Companies and French Unemployment (an op-ed columnist fills in some of the blanks regarding so-called “subsidies” and notes that if you want to move in France, you either have to do it on a weekday or pay 20% more)

Meanwhile, in a surely unrelated story:

France’s jobless recovery stalls
France’s PM says the government is fighting unemployment

France’s jobless rate remained little changed in August, as the economy continued to perform sluggishly.

Unemployment dipped to 2,712,000 from 2,718,000 in July on a seasonally adjusted basis, official figures show.

That left France’s jobless rate unchanged at 9.9% in August, the government said.

France’s national statistics office confirmed that the economy grew by just 0.1% during the second quarter, from 0.4% in the first three months of 2005.

The gross domestic product (GDP) data was the worst since the third quarter of 2004.

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UPDATE: L’Ombre de l’Olivier predicts how HP will handle things if forced into reducing or delaying the job cuts.
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Related Post (link added on Oct. 6): The French Disconnection: Absurd Labor Policies and Protectionism Kill Economic Growth