"His Master's Voice" "I think La voix de son maitre, "his master's voice", is an awful title." "For a hundred reasons, of which I'll give you a select few." "Firstly, it takes a well-known expression which is tired, even hackneyed." "And that expression includes the word "master"" "which is singularly inapt." "It immediately conjures up the image of a dog." "We all like dogs." "But in every language in the Western world, the term "dog" has negative connotations." ""Master" does seem inapt, and we'll look at the dog issue and why." "What does it say about the people who chose this title without even realising, perhaps?" "But the word "master" is a hackneyed cliché from the 19th century." "The anarchists' "Neither god nor master"." "That's the human rather than the animal aspect, and it doesn't apply to 20th century CEOs in the same way." "There's something else insidious about the choice of the word "master"." "It reeks of certain late 19th century philosophical theories." "Regarding the dog, you can't help but think of a dog, and what does a dog do?" "Listens to his master's voice and obeys, if he's well trained!" "You can't expect a title, be it a few words or a few lines, to faithfully represent a work." "You can ask that it be authentic, i.e. a person reading the title has an idea what the work may be." "Chief Executives , The Management" "You could have a 3-page title." "The way I see it, this film is trying to describe a category of person which is generally referred to in France as " les patrons"." "And if it were called Les Patrons, some might take it pejoratively, some might see the 19th century aspect, as you said, but I still think it's the most honest, it's not a pun, a spoonerism or a side-step," "and I would definitely go with that as my title suggestion:" "Les Patrons." "I like the term " patron", and I'll tell you why:" "it's the simplest, humblest, most ordinary term." "Show me a machine operative who would say, "Yes, chief executive."" "It just wouldn't happen." "It's a ridiculous idea." "The downside of " patron" is that it comes with emotional baggage." "You often hear people, in the United States and other countries, saying, "Yes, boss." Yes, Boss ?" "I'll tell you why I don't like the word "patron"." "It's the etymology." "" Patron" comes from "pater", the paterfamilias and the excessive power that once represented." "There used to be the family, and the city." "The business emerged as a new intermediary, distanced from the family." "Nowadays a family can't control a business, unless it's very small." "Once you have medium and large businesses, a business becomes a distinct social entity, and thus " patron" is inapt to describe us, modem chief executives." "By that token we should change the word "father"" "because fathers today are not the same as 25 years ago!" "Do you feel any more able than I do to pinpoint the moment in your career when you became a patron ?" "Because our career as managers is an ongoing process." "You start off an engineer, then assistant engineer to whatever, and at a certain point you become president of a small subsidiary or general manager." "But personally I never suddenly felt anointed or that I was a patron on the day I was given that responsibility." "We know nothing of the ideals of ironmasters, for example, who went on to start businesses, but are now unknown." "We want to know, and it's up to us to define them, without denying the past, by defining what we are today." "That's why I thought of The New Political Animal because I think chief executives, not patrons , but chief executives, the people with the responsibilities, are destined to explain, to persuade, rather than saying, "I'm the boss!"" "In the New Political Animal idea, is there anything to pursue other than..." ""The New Animal" is not enough, and "political" is a confusing adjective." "Or maybe, like mountaineers:" "Conquistadors of the Possible ." "The idea of conquest, of sport, a job that's out of the ordinary..." "But "of the possible": the day-to-day, enabling people to make a living." "And also, with the idea of conquest comes the idea of pleasure, and it must be said that one of the best things about being a chief executive is the pleasure of doing the job." "It's a new style of leadership, a new style of man, and I think it's a film which is forward-looking rather than describing 19th century entrepreneurs." "So is there an adjective which could improve the Les Patrons idea?" "That does have a pejorative aspect." "A lot of patrons don't like the word." "You can't be the boss and not like decisions, so I suggest, for humour, The Men Who No Longer Say, "I'm the Boss!"" "to break with the past, and perhaps to say that we are a different animal, with a taste for risks, for persuasion." "And, what's more, a taste for taking risks with no escape route." "We have no safety net." "In the private sector, anyway." "The Players ?" "The Winners ?" " The Winners !" "Not bad..." " The Winners ." "It may be a something of a gut reaction, but I remember, quite a few years ago now," "I was not yet 30 and I had the honour of managing a machine factory at Saint-Ouen in northern Paris, and I remember my joy and pride the first time a worker on the milling machine line turned to me" "and said, " Patron, what should I do with the such-and-such sprocket in the gearbox?"" "I felt neither embarrassed nor hurt." "I'll say it again:" "I took that short, simple word, from a man who had turned to ask me for help, who wanted advice from a man he thought knew more than him," "I took it the same way as the word "master"." "Clearly there are slave masters, but there's also "master" in the sense of a teacher, someone who is there to help you learn, and in that short, friendly word "patron"," "I felt both a bit of affection, perhaps a bit of suggestion." "And if the word "patron" has both meanings, the monster who feeds on the sweat of the people but also someone who is a bit like..." "I'll go with paternalism." "A bit like a father." "Well, I choose the second sense." "And I am proud and happy when people call me that in that short, pleasant formulation, "Good morning, patron."" "I've always been worried, when I go into a factory, about the sort of anonymity." "I see the workers at work, I go to look at a new investment, a new set-up, and I see the men and women working," "I go past, talking to my engineers, who are showing rne what's new, and from time to time I think..." "I look at those men..." "They see me and I don't look at them, because I have things on my mind." "I don't have a relationship with them." "That's a big worry." "I had that when I was a young engineer." "I started out with 50 or 60 workers and I'd go to them every day, I knew what they were doing," "I'd even go and learn the job with them." "But little by little, as you take on more responsibility, you no longer work on a personal level with the workers." "You work with a number of other managers." "But the various managers, who do have contact with the workers," "I make sure I check, which is easy, that they are not in the same role as me vis-é-vis the workers, and that at least one person, whose job it is, has that relationship with the other men who make up his workshop or his factory." "Work in companies did not evolve much between 1950 and 1965, or rather it changed in terms of the division of labour and moving towards mass production." "Since then, and certainly right now, we are taking a great interest in the personalisation of the workplace and in the reactions of individuals to their work." "And, at least in the group of companies for which I am responsible, we are looking to get back to a human scale and to have individualised work." "I'll give you two examples:" "a factory where automated machines produce parts on very long runs." "The worker is there to supply the machine or to do quality control, but he has free choice, not exactly about how he spends his time, but about what he does at any given moment;" "he can light a cigarette, have a chat with his neighbour, he might be thinking, perhaps about a new task he has to perform." "Next door, the parts are produced in a production line." "Those workers may be paid more than the last lot." "But they're tied." "Each is a link in a chain and they don't have that choice." "They can't have a cigarette when they want to, and if they want a break, someone has to replace them." "So there's a difference in freedom in the way they spend their working day." "And we should move more towards respecting that freedom." "There's no getting away from it, even within very large groups of people," "I'm talking groups of 2 or 3,000 people, unless we go back to the level of autonomous businesses inside of these same companies, where the manager knows everyone by name and where people have non-anonymous relationships." "That's what we're looking for, and it's not at all easy." "Because, whilst making that progress, we have to continue producing as many products, mass production, for an ever decreasing price, in order to gain a bigger market share." "Because in amongst all these noble and generous aims, one mustn't forget the bottom line is to provide a living for all the staff with a market share in a competitive market." "For me there are a few imperatives." "Firstly, to know as much as possible, even in terms of the smallest details, about each person's work." "In my case, I was lucky enough, from the age of 18, to start work in our factories by spending a period at all the different production stages." "Textiles was our trade, and I saw the spinning process from start to finish and what all the different operations were." "This was over a period of three years, because at the start of my career, the first present I was given by my uncle, Mr Marcel Boussac, was two sets of overalls and a train ticket to go and start getting to know how our industrial process worked." "When I first started taking over management of this business," "I had some very difficult problems to resolve because, due to serious financial difficulties with our partners, which was our bankers on the one hand and the government on the other," "I had to rapidly reduce the workforce and close some operations." "Those were probably the most emotional moments of my career." "Industry is clearly linked to men's happiness, but that's not what industry is, nor it that its aim." "If industry's aim were to make people happy, that would mean that people are solely materialistic, which I don't believe at all." "Fortunately, people have many other levels beyond the material." "Furthermore, industry is a place of creativity, but which must bend to a certain number of rules, particularly the hardest rule, in favour of the customer:" "the rule of cost." "Even in creative fields, industry may seem restrictive to certain creators, exceptional creators, who may find it hard to work in industry." "Once you take on the role of chief executive, as I understand it, you don't have a feeling of power, of making people wary of you." "You don't really feel like..." "You don't have a real feeling of being in command." "Because, to begin with, being in command is rare, it's only really in exceptional cases." "You only issue orders when you see people have taken the wrong path." "You issue orders very rarely." "Obviously in a small business, or in a workshop of a larger business, the foreman may exercise power in a more... direct way." "Because in a small business or a workshop, instructions have to be issued vocally." "On a building site, you might say, "You there!" "Go and get some cement!" "Watch out!" "That's dangerous!" "Be careful with the ladder!" Etc." "The foreman may say, "Look!" "Your supports are not straight!"" "In those situations commands are issued out loud, a bit like the captain of a ship, who takes his loud-hailer then commands the manoeuvres." "But in a major business, it almost never happens that leadership takes the form of authoritarian commands." "It's not like that." "I don't like people contrasting the narrow decision space of a cleaner with the significant decision space of the CEO." "I'm not afraid to say that if the cleaner is in his place and the CEO is in his, it takes as much effort for the cleaner to do a good job as it does for the CEO." "The difference is that their basic potential and knowledge are completely different." "But in terms of a man's means of expression and the effort required, for a cleaner who wants to do his job well it's just as difficult as for any CEO or important man to do his job well." "Consequently, I don't think there's an inherent difference in responsibility between that of a cleaner who does his job well and that of a CEO who does his well." "They are two men with a mission, and if they want to do it well, bearing in mind their differing means, it demands the same effort." "If there is a difference between "right wing" and "left wing" society, to use today's terminology, it's clear to me that once you're in a "right wing" society, as we are now," "still using that terminology, there's no difference between a "right wing" and a "left wing" CEO because a CEO, in the society we live in, cannot really be..." "He cannot diverge greatly from an average way of operating, which is good for everyone." "Because in this job you are held to the rules of the game which are determined by the general climate and the internal climate of the company." "And these rules of the game aren't open to interpretation." "It's like in bridge, there's only one rule;" "you play well or badly but you always play by the same rules." "For centuries, men have dreamed of a homogenous planet, of the breaking down of borders." "But, curiously, the day that breaking down of borders comes about, on a business, company and industry level, everyone panics at the emergence of a worrying, many-tentacled, supranational power." "Firstly, there are a few multinationals." "There is no great club of multinationals, there is no one board of directors." "Each operates in its own interests, and often they are in competition." "They fight amongst themselves." "I'll come back to that." "But as powerful as a multinational may be, its real power will always be limited by countries' sovereignty." "A country, however small, has the means to legislate, has the means to slow down or even stop the proliferation or the undue power of multinationals." "There are always exceptions." "I'm thinking of the banana republics in Central America." "I don't know if it's true, I have no way of checking, but there was a time when they were basically being run by United Fruits." "But that's an exception." "Look at our neighbouring countries, be it France, Holland or Belgium, or even Luxembourg." "These countries all have the means at their disposal, if they so wish, to prevent a given multinational from operating in their territory in a way which is contrary to the country's interests." "As for possible collusion among multinationals, forming an enormous planetary board of directors which controls the world, as I said, they are often in competition." "But that's a..." "legal expression." "Basically, although they are in competition, multinationals operate in parallel, and not because they have a big red telephone, like the super powers, and they tip each other off:" ""My dear, if you want to avoid paying tax in Sweden, do this and that."" "It's simply because being of approximately equal weight and run by management." "A note about bosses: there isn't a single multinational owned by one man." "They generally have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of owners:" "their shareholders." "Each multinational's management went to the same schools as the management of the next multinational, were trained in the same skills, think roughly the same things, such that the same events provoke the same reactions in every multinational." "IBM is a multinational." "IBM France is a subsidiary of a multinational." "I want to point out it's not a recent development." "IBM France was founded in France in 1919." "So I'd say from the start we were a multinational company." "Even if we hadn't been from the start, we would be now because the type of industry we're in involves, for its investments..." "Given that we work with short runs..." "We make computers, not cars, so we have short runs, and our target market is an international market." "All the major computer companies are multinationals." "More broadly, I think most of the big businesses in France and elsewhere are trying to become multinationals." "You only have to see the vital incentives which are now offered in France, and, I imagine, in other countries, for companies to export, i.e. for them to become multinationals, to believe that the multinational phenomenon is universal." "All the big businesses are or soon will be multinational and the divide between the two types of operation will become increasingly unclear." "Many of my colleagues come from companies which have been taken over in the last seven or eight years." "I don't know any more..." "Obviously I still remember where they came from, but we don't talk about it." "They don't know where they came from." "I'm linking the need for good psychological perceptions and for an almost humanist approach:" "when we absorb people, it is unquestionably rare, except where we merge two approximately equal elements and mix up the teams." "If one is bigger and absorbs the other to become bigger still, the people who have been absorbed are probably vexed, distressed by what is a kind of failure, and one must rid them of those hang-ups quickly" "and bring them out, so that they fit in with everyone else in the group." "Hence the notion of anonymity!" "It's vital that they forget they were taken over by such-and-such a group." "They are now part of that group." "I think that anonymity is a strength." "I honestly believe, though it's always hard to know if one is truly sincere, that I am, when it comes down to it, a GO." "Both a GO like any other GO and also perhaps the GO with the most responsibility." "But still a GO." "The fact I'm the company president doesn't change that, Gilbert Trigano GO (Club Med Host) which doesn't mean I'm not shouldering my responsibilities as president, which were assigned to me by the board, and not by the G05!" "And there we come to a very serious problem;" "There are currently a number of trends." "There are probably three main trends:" "things are good as they are, let's not overstate the case, and men either become patrons through capital or through management, as is the case with me." "And they either take charge in the natural course of things or they are chosen to be the CEO by the owners, the shareholders." "There's a second trend which is almost the other end of the scale which says, "Things can't go on like this, the man in charge should be chosen by the people who make up the business," "who work for the business."" "Then there's a third trend, which is almost a compromise, like many things in life, which is to say," ""Those of us who have a bit more understanding of the problems, we are prepared to envisage a solution whereby the CEO is chosen by the shareholders and that choice is then ratified or rejected by the staff," "in which case someone else is proposed."" "But at some point that has to stop because we can't live in anarchy." "I came out of the first trend, because I was chosen by the Club's shareholders and I hope..." "No, it's more than that." "I'd like to think that if the second trend was put into practice now," "I don't know about the future, but right now, the G05 might choose me." "One thing I've noticed about people, in business:" "they want to be liked." "It's silly, because that's not their role; they're not there to be liked." "But no matter what their level, they do their best not to displease anyone, which can lead to a kind of infernal demagoguery at all levels, and if people were elected in the company, it would very rapidly degrade into a popularity contest." "To get elected, you would have to try and seem as likeable as possible, as popular as possible, as... pleasant as possible to the people you work with." "Ability would become a side issue." "The person chosen might well not be the best." "You would come up against the same problems as you do in politics;" "the guy on top of the bill is not necessarily the best man for the job." "It so happened that at the time of the Liberation I was a civil servant." "I was assistant director of foreign economic relations, and I left government following the intervention of the minister for the national economy a communist, Mr Frangois Billoux." "His successor asked me to stay, but I had already come to the realisation my future didn't lie in government." "So I left and started my own little company which wasn't, at the time, set up to offer credit..." "Well, it was a kind of credit;" "it was set up to lend money to people importing raw materials from abroad and then re-exporting finished products." "It was a small business with a capital of 10 million old francs and which, to start with, consisted of twelve members of staff." "A few years went by, business was good, and it became a very big business because the little company with a capital of 10 million old francs had become a group whose consolidated balance today is 45 billion new francs" "and which has equity of more than 3 billion." "I'll come to the question of authority, because the nature of that problem is entirely different for the public service manager and for the CEO of a private concern." "For a private business, by definition, authority doesn't come from the state." "Where does it come from?" "I'd say basically it comes from the efficiency or lack thereof, in the selection of the chief executive, in the selection of the right chief executive to lead the troops." "How can that efficiency be guaranteed?" "Currently it is guaranteed..." "The people who represent the capital..." "The people who represent the capital, who have a direct interest in the success of the business are well placed to judge whether X or Y would be capable of guaranteeing profitability." "Of course I can see that it might be desirable, theoretically, for that selection of the chief executive by the financiers to be associated with a choice made by the staff." "It's theoretically a very attractive idea." "But in practice, I think it's absolutely unworkable." "You need only look at the description I gave of the chief executive's role to see that it's inconceivable for him to spend his life in a constant electoral campaign within the company." "Democracy, in the usual sense of the word, i.e. democracy which comes from a choice made by a vast electorate, is entirely inconceivable in business." "You may think it provocative, but I'll state it with conviction:" "a company can only function within the framework of a monarchical system, in which the executives are selected by a relatively small group of people." "In the Republic, power belongs to the people." "In business it's different; for now it still belongs to the shareholders." "Could there be other kinds of legitimacy?" "First one must consider how the shareholders, how the machine, the technostructure interprets that legitimacy." "I'm in no position to say they choose the most suitable person or the best person." "I can't say that." "But that's what I'd like to think." "That's the most pleasing and logical idea." "But the best for what?" "The best person to manage the business as I described it, i.e. the best possible management for the shareholders, for the staff and for the customers." "But that opens up another question:" "In those conditions, is it right, given that the management has to suit shareholders, staff and customers, that only the shareholders, through the Board, or whatever other process, get to choose who's the boss?" "Should the staff not have a say?" "The men and women who work in the business have the right to ask themselves:" "are the powers..." ""that run my company legitimate or not?" "That's how I'd phrase the problem." "Now, in order to give an answer, we need to look at the history." "At the outset, in a company, the power was in the hands of the financiers and that was entirely legitimate, to my mind." "It was entirely legitimate because a man who set up a business, who ran it, was a man who gave his all for the business." "Ford gave his all for his business." "He could have been ruined!" "Citroén gave his all for his business." "There are still craftsmen, small-scale bosses who give their all for their business." "They practically give their lives:" "they work, the decrease in yield, the worries, the failures..." "All that has a profound effect on them." "And in the not so distant past, men in charge of medium-size businesses loved them so much that they invested their personal wealth, they mortgaged their houses." "Basically you had these men who had invested their capital and their very lives in the business." "And alongside that, you had workers who were entirely mobile." "For a long time, workers were very mobile." "Businesses 40 years ago were not a place workers would choose to stay." "Today..." "So you had an immobile entrepreneur and a mobile workforce." "Today the situation is different." "I'm talking about big businesses." "In big business, the capital has become anonymous." "That doesn't mean it's not necessary, but it's anonymous." "If you want to sell shares in L'Oréal or Rhiine-Poulenc or Proctor 8;" "Gamble, that takes place at the stock exchange." "Capital is anonymous." "The biggest shareholder in IBM, for example, owns 0.000001% of the capital." "That's how it is in most big American corporations." "So capital has become anonymous." "It's depersonalised." "At the same time, in Western Europe and in Japan..." "I won't say it's exactly the same in America, where people move about, but in Western Europe and Japan, the workforce has become immobile." "Which is to say..." "There's an expression..." "I don't know who used it first, maybe Bounine and me, or maybe we heard it somewhere else." "I think we were the first to say it:" "companies are the new parish halls." "Certainly in the past people had a place to gather: their village, where there was a church, the village square, the little bars..." "And nowadays companies have become a gathering place where the workers talk to one another and feel solidarity in their problems." "I remember once a foreman had split a workshop." "There were 20 people and he'd taken out the first 10, alphabetically." "He had to choose somehow, the workshop had to be split and he put 10 people on the left and 10 people on the right." "It caused a real drama because there were women who'd been working together for 10, 15, 20 years." "They felt complete solidarity for one another." "So it's a place of communication which means that nowadays we have mobile capital and an immobile workforce." "With that in mind, it's easy to see that the legitimacy of power in businesses is changing." "Once capital becomes anonymous, businesses no longer really belongs to the capital." "But capital is still your economic conscience, and without that any business will go astray, so it is still necessary." "On the other hand, it's also clear, without going into the Marxist theory of accumulation by the workers, which means they have a right of ownership over the tools they use, that the workers in any business do question," "and are right to do so, the legitimacy of power insofar as that legitimacy lies in the hands of the capital." "So we need to come to a compromise, but it must be a practical compromise." "And there I think we need to be wary of any ideology, because if we approach the idea of democracy in a company by transposing the problems of democracy in politics, we completely confuse the issue." "I don't believe at all that self-management is possible because I can't see how men would be able to manage themselves." "You only have to have lived a little to realise that once men form a group, they need to find a leader." "To begin with, a company consists of a few men." "Unionism naturally has no role in the company." "But as the company grows, once it reaches a certain size, where it can sustain more than 100 employees, or several hundred employees..." "In our case, we started to see unionism once the company had 500 employees." "It can be a very difficult situation for the chief executive when he sees the power of the unions in his business for the first time." "And in my view, in one out of every two cases, the trauma is such that the chief executive's plans completely change." "And often, and I think this is misguided, obviously, he ends up altering his company's development because he is physically and psychologically unable to take it, the message which is sent out by the creation of the union," "which is that there are social problems in his business, not everybody is happy in his business." "And he sincerely believed that they were." "Creating a new business is something very exciting, not only exciting for chief executives but for everyone involved in the adventure, and once they are caught up in this kind of adventure, people don't really think about making demands," "even less so if, with the success of the venture, their situation improves." "So in the first ten or twelve years of the Compagnie Bancaire" "I didn't have any union problems." "And, in fact, there came a point where I had to tell my staff to elect representatives." "They didn't want to." "It may seem odd, but it's true." "I may be flattering myself, but I immediately struck up cordial and cooperative relations with the union officers at Paribas." "Friendly even." "In March '74 there was a long strike which lasted more than three weeks, and all I can say about that long strike, which was a strike across the whole banking profession, is that the first two establishments to see the end of the strike" "were Paribas and the Compagnie Bancaire, and I think that's because throughout that strike, in which, it must be said, the unions were pretty much at their limit, because it was a strike where the main agitators" "were quite undisciplined and badly trained." "But throughout the strike" "I had almost daily discussions with the unions and it never posed a serious problem." "The desire to see an end to the situation was shared by both sides." "It may well be that having a social organisation, that being socially on the ball, about salaries, about working conditions, working hours, the comfort of the staff, both material and moral comfort, the restrictions of the job..." "Being ahead on those points does not make the boss immune to social problems." "Even less so given that the unions' tactics may be to attack the most socially-aware company in the hope that all the others will be pulled along with it." "And that company may be more vulnerable, because it may be that workers who have more financial reserves are easier to convince to take action." "It may also be that workers in a more intellectual situation are more likely to react to provocation and demands." "What I mean is it maybe easier to mobilise, on ideological grounds, intellectuals from a lab or a factory which is clean and technologically advanced, than people who are less highly-trained, who, unfortunately, are more concerned with their basic needs," "which have been summed up as, "travel, work, sleep"." "I'm not sure of the order." "It depends if you start in the morning or the evening!" "We are in constant discussions with the unions." "But then what else are the unions if not the managerial side of the workers' demands?" "The workers have given themselves managers to argue for them just as we are the managers on the other side." "That's what I would hope for from the unions, and that's what you find in countries like Germany or the USA." "It's not exactly like that in France, for reasons of ethics and deep-rooted political ideals, because certain unions, not all of them, entirely reject the liberal capitalist system we live in, and I have seen strikes where I was told:" ""We're not on strike because of the company, we want to fight the system, and to fight the overall system we are starting with the specific system in which we work."" "That makes dialogue very difficult, if not impossible." "That's where relations between the management and the unions fall down." "When we no longer understand one another, we have to talk, explain ourselves, in terms that our opposite numbers will understand, which is not at all easy." "I came across an example recently which gave me pause for thought." "In a factory which had just seen pay rises, which was decided by the manager and not as a directive from Paris, because our manager explained the economic problem, and had told them:" ""Here's what I can give you."" "I happened to be president of that company." "I came to the factory and people immediately asked to see me." "Some twenty workers stopped work to come and see me, and I saw them." "And they said, "You're the president, you must be able to give us more than the manager did."" "Now, this factory, about eight years ago belonged to one of those "God-given right" bosses who had, for various reasons, lost control over the company." "So this group of workers still had this Zola-type impression of the extraordinary power of the boss who could, with a stroke of his pen, wipe out his colleague's decision and in so doing, say, "I'm the boss." "I'm a good boss."" "Those days are gone and I told them I thought the same as their manager, and I re-explained, in my own way, the reasons behind their pay increase in the competitive context to which their products were subject." "This factory did a lot of exports, the pound was low at the time, they were sending thousands of products to England." "I tried to explain it to them in simple terms." "I don't know if I convinced them, but they did at least listen." "And when they left my office, they all went back to work." "The unions are a kind of opposition, and one thing I believe very strongly is that you can't do anything, you can't progress, particularly in a world as complex as the modem economic world..." "You can't progress unless you have an opposition." "History has shown this, time and again." "If there had been no union opposition in the 19th century, the world of work, overall, would not be in the situation it's in today." "So I see it as a reactionary force, but also an indispensable force and if the strength of the unions were to be destroyed or undermined in any way" "I think the economy of the world would be seriously at risk of deterioration." "You may say there are various kinds of unions and of unionism and business leaders in France in particular are protesting about the "political" kind." ""We can't deal with political unions!"" ""The unions should stick to defending workers' rights, they shouldn't be manipulated by political parties!"" "I must say I think quite the opposite." "Obviously there is so-called "apolitical" unionism, which sees its role as consisting solely of demanding a 2 franc pay rise fixing the roof when it's cold and asking for heating in winter." "That kind of unionism is restricting itself to a form which is very 19th century, and seems very outmoded." "Secondly, when those unions develop suddenly, violently, they very quickly descend into the kinds of racketeering which have poisoned the unions in the United States, in particular." "We all remember the disgraceful affair of the truck drivers' union which was manipulated by gangsters." "You may say, "Which is worse, being manipulated by gangsters or being manipulated by the communist party?"" "I'm very clear on that:" "I prefer the second kind of manipulation because it puts unionism back within a context of ideas." "In other words, the union is not only fighting for a 2 franc meal allowance it is fighting so that whole economic or industrial world adopts new forms, understands new realities in a different way." "I greatly admire the trouble and worry to which the unionists put themselves to raise their troops, to launch movements, to put forward good arguments." "And I think that if by some twist of fate" "I were to find myself on the other side of the barricades," "I would feel that same joy, which is free, unpaid, which comes from playing the role of a leader of the opposition in the same way that I feel like a kind of top dog on the side of business management." "I often feel that men can understand one another and that the labels " patron" or "unionist"" "stop us from breaking though that and coming to an understanding." "I believe that when we play the game, when there's psychology, because I think it's the most marvellous kind of psychology the labels fall off, and maybe everyone could change places and understand each other's arguments." "If tomorrow, for example, union negotiations started with:" ""We're going to change places!" "You can play the part of the boss and you can be the union representative"" "we'd be surprised by the arguments each gave in the role of the other." "And I think..." "In a nutshell, a business can only survive if there's a kind of consensus." "For that consensus to exist, there are two methods:" "a show of strength, "I'm stronger than you, we'll do it my way!"" "That's not really a consensus." "Revenge would always be afoot." "Alternatively you have to accept a farce." "In the future, if each is persuaded that he is the union rep by chance or the boss by chance, each will see it as a role he plays which doesn't have any fundamental importance in his life." "He's there, he must play his part." "As long as it is a "part" and he's not turning his "character" into a person." "A chief executive is a character." "A union rep is a character." "MANAGEMENT, UNIONS SAME FIGHT?" "That's a sticking point, which would be resented both by the union and by the management, whoever you asked." "If you asked a unionist, he would give you an answer in two parts." "Firstly: "What?" "Of course not!" ""I can name 2,500 companies where unions are not recognised, 40,708 where the law on works councils is not applied." Which is true!" ""And last year there were at least 1,852 cases of union representatives being unfairly sacked without due process."" "That's the first answer." "Secondly:" ""if socialism has to see the great reconciliation of the monopolies with the working class, it would rather retire now." End of the unionist quote." "The manager will tell you, "Business is a vast community which includes partners whose interests sometimes differ but which have to be synthesised." "The unions have their role to play, as does training, and it is through concerted negotiations, argumentative but peaceful, that our great country can advance down the road to happiness."" "I think both answers are fair." "The possibility for the staff to express themselves via various means within a company is absolutely fundamental." "We have put a lot of effort into this issue." "I'd like to mention a few things we do." "Firstly, what I would call the "normal" route, the main route for staff to express themselves is through the management structure." "Any person can and should go to see his superior to discuss working conditions, and if he has a specific problem or demand, he should go through the management." "I think that's mostly how it happens." "But to make it systematic and to make it easier to say what you think we have put in place additional, formal structures." "For example, once a year, for everyone in the company, at every level, there is an obligatory interview with his immediate superior in the course of which he can discuss freely the past year of work," "the good and bad points of what's been done, relationships, and also the future." "This interview is taken down in writing, signed by both parties, and there's also the idea of "career development" which is discussed, and each person talks about what he wants." "And it's formal." "And it's done throughout the company." "So in case normal communication with the management hasn't happened, we have introduced a formal process for it to happen." "You may say once a year is not much, but it ensures it happens at least once a year and in a way that everyone understands." "It's interesting that people who miss their evaluation interview complain." "They'll say, "I didn't have my evaluation interview, this is no good, I have a right to have that interview."" "So we do that." "The second thing is opinion polls." "The staff know that they can give an opinion anonymously on all aspects of the business, either on a list of questions, and there are hundreds, so it's a long annual process for most people, or they can simply make any comment they like, anonymously." "Anyone can freely express his thoughts on society, on his work, on relations with his colleagues, on his boss, on anything that's wrong, completely anonymously." "And these comments are collected by each department, so we know, by department, how things are, what's good and bad, how it compares to the rest of the company, is there one place where morale is high or low?" "And it's important to the management, because just knowing that something is wrong is often 90% of the work, because once you know what and why, and we often do find out why, it's easier to sort out." "Finally, on an individual level, there's one more method." "In this company we have an "open door" policy which can be used individually." "It's not often used, but everybody knows they can use it." "What does it mean?" "It means a man who's talked to his boss but isn't satisfied with the conversation and how it turned out, or he thinks he's not getting enough credit, or there's something he would like to change but it's not happening," "he can "move up the ladder" as we say." "He can see his boss's boss." "And if his boss's boss doesn't agree, he can go over his head." "He can go as high as the chief executive, as high as he likes." "It's fine, no one will stop him, he can make his request and his case will be considered, judged by someone... "Judged" is a big word." "It's not a judgment." "Examined by someone outside of the relevant hierarchy, who can look and say, "This chap says this, he's done this, and I think he's probably in the right."" "It's another route the staff can take." "We've planned for them to be able to express themselves." "Again, the main thing is the day-to-day, which should mostly be through your superior, who is responsible for the work and for the satisfaction of his staff." "That's a basic objective which we give all our managers." "It's a big part of their objectives." "Obviously there's another route which is provided for by law, which is the union route." "In our company we consider the union route..." "Firstly it's fixed in law, and our company scrupulously applies the law." "So there's no question of not applying it." "Nonetheless, I think, and I think the rest of the management agrees, that it's their responsibility to resolve problems directly, without necessarily going down the union route." "In other words, it is the managers' responsibility, and they know it, that if a problem arises, they must resolve it in good time, by sensible means, and as soon as it comes up, not a year later," "so there's no time for it to become serious." "And if the problem is not resolved, then there's the union route which will work, it will be conveyed by the committees or the reps, and it will reach the management." "But it's not a good thing for a manager, and our people know that, if a problem has come up via the union route rather than being resolved by the people whose job it was to resolve it." "Last year, there was a structural change within the group, and I decided to take charge of negotiating company-wide agreements because our agreement is renewed annually and every year we through it with a fine-tooth comb and decide what to do for the next year." "The union representatives had made a list of changes they wanted to see in wages, conditions, etc." "I had that list and I had worked on it." "So I knew what I could agree to, line byline." "I arrived with my papers in order and, instead of discussing it for two days," "I said, "On point one, it's this, point two, it's this..."" "It could have been over in ten minutes." "But they took it very badly!" "I had somehow stripped the unions of their role and they were angry with me and they all went on strike." "Then my proposals were put to a collective vote on the shop floor, which pleased them, they all voted in favour and the strike was over." "But it was stupid, I wouldn't do it again." "You have to play the game." "It is the nature of things that men only make progress under pressure." "And to a certain extent, social tension and union opposition..." "And I'd like it if it was oriented more to the benefit of the company, which is not always the case." "It's no bad thing for that conflict to continue." "I think a chief executive who is surrounded only by yes men is a chief executive who is doomed rapidly to failure." "Likewise if he doesn't have social partners who argue with him and dispute his opinions and decisions." "I think it's also good for the unions themselves because it maintains, between the chief executive and the staff, whatever their social status, a constant discussion designed to obtain benefits for the staff and which leads the boss to provide them progressively," "so as not to make moves incompatible with the company's finances." "I think in that regard the tension is necessary because when the staff get something, they want to be sure they're getting the maximum they could have got." "And to be certain, you need to feel you've pushed resistance to the limit." "We find that constantly." "If the boss gives too easily, because he can, then I didn't get as much as I could have, I didn't fight hard enough." "But if I have to fight very hard and the discussion lasts all night, and we don't agree till 5am, with tired eyes and morning stubble..." "Or if it took two or three days of striking to get it, some benign uproar, then I feel we fought well, we argued, and I went as far as I could go." "It's almost one of the pleasures, for everyone concerned." "Not the desire to fight to the death, but to argue for something you believe in, and maybe fight for it a little." "And when I say, in jest, "managing tensions"," "I mean not wanting to resolve things straight away, but make sure there are people who will enjoy resolving them, be it at a board level, or the executives, or sometimes the supervisory staff, and also the workers' unions." "The pleasure should be shared out, because, let's face it, it's not always fun and games, business is not about laughter." "I'm talking about a group of 2,000 people, very probably with a wonderful CEO, very humanist, very much on the ball, and who, when he feels the stirrings of some tension, a demand from the workers," "perhaps to do with working conditions, speed, a lack of equipment, says, "That's true!" "Let's sort it out!"" "The elastic stretched..." "Snap, he cut it." "And he was cutting it all the time." "So the factory was, in a way, emasculated, so to speak." "And my fear, which we discussed, was that behind this perfectly smooth, planed fagade, unspoken demands might be building up that would blow up in his face." "And it was important to let some smaller problems build up so that people would speak out and then you could glean whether there was anything else behind it." "I think the days when simply by being appointed to a position you acquired the necessary authority, those days are gone." "The days when all it took was your name on a memo," ""Mr So-and-so is the department head or the company director", to see your authority immediately recognised, accepted in the company, those days are gone." "Those things are still necessary, but it takes more." "Nowadays the people in a company have to recognise their boss, and I don't just mean the CEO." "They have to recognise bosses at all levels." "Managers have to be recognised as having the necessary qualities, the leadership, to assume their responsibilities." "And only if they have those skills, which are largely people skills, but also technical skills, will they be able to do their job effectively." "Otherwise they won't do it." "They may give orders, do their work, but their directives will not be shared by their colleagues who don't instinctively recognise them, explicitly or otherwise, as their leader, as their boss." "I believe any group needs a recognised leader and I think even those people who talk about self-management would have to recognise the existence of some kind of leadership and I can't see how you can reconcile pragmatism and efficiency in business" "without some kind of group leader." "I don't think there are many different ways of governing a business ." "Self-management has been discussed in some countries, like Yugoslavia." "I don't know the results of that." "I don't think they were conclusive." "And should anyone come and ask me that question about self-management," "I don't want to have to give the answer which I was given in a socialist country where self-management had been tried out." "I asked an executive from that country, who was loyal but lucid, how successful it had been, and he said:" ""The heads of the self-management experiment are currently in prison." "We'll let them out to help your country, if you like."" "I think we need to be wary of any ideology, because if we approach the idea of democracy in a company by transposing the problems of democracy in politics, we completely confuse the issue." "I don't believe at all that self-management is possible because I can't see how men would be able to manage themselves." "You only have to have lived a little to realise that once men form a group, they need to find a leader." "If what self-management means is as decentralised an organisation as possible, where the decisions are taken at the lowest level possible, i.e. with a lot of autonomy, respecting each man as an individual in his own right," "where each can express himself..." "I must say I'm in favour of that kind of self-management as long as decisions and efficiency are based on objective criteria i.e. economic criteria." "If a movement for self-management started up in France, it would play the role that consumer ideology played between 1950 and '68, which was a brilliant system of social integration and equality, it brought about a certain social integration" "which was then tom apart in '68." "People are looking for something else now and self-management is a possible answer." "Name the president of General Motors, of General Electric, of American Telegraph and Telephone." "Name the CEOs of the big German companies." "Name the owners of Volkswagen..." "Capital has become anonymous." "It's depersonalised." "I think that anonymity is a strength." ","