Angry employees locked their British boss in his factory for 48 hours in an attempt to stop him shipping their jobs to Central Europe to avoid France’s onerous labour laws.

The incident at the BRS car parts company, near to the eastern city of Besançon, was the second this year in which French workers have detained a British manager amid anger over job losses blamed on globalisation. “Anglo-Saxon” free trade doctrines are seen as a spur for la délocalisation, the much-feared export of jobs, which President Sarkozy promised to fight.

Mike Bacon, the head of BRS, which makes fittings for the car industry, was prevented from leaving his plant on Saturday morning after workers spotted Slovakian lorries loading equipment. The 38 staff had not received their January pay and suspected that he was shipping out to Slovakia, where he runs another plant.

The workers released Mr Bacon yesterday afternoon after accompanying him to a court where a judge ordered the liquidation of the company, which was taken over a year ago by a subsidiary of the Suffolk-based Utilux company.

“We did it so that the workers could be paid and receive their benefits,” Renaud Cornu, a sales representative, said. Jean-Paul Clerc, another worker, said: “We did not take him hostage. Mr Bacon decided to stay with us . . . He could come and go but not beyond the gates.”

Mr Bacon said that he was moving because his French workers cost €25 (£18.50) an hour compared with the €5 he paid Slovakian workers. “It’s over there that everything is going on . . . Everything there is more favourable,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.

Travelling to Slovakia, Mr Bacon told The Times that he had decided to close the business with no notice after being unable to pay the staff. “The factory ran out of cash. The order books fell off and the business couldn’t keep running,” he said. “I understand why the workers are upset.” The salaries would be paid, he said. He denied French reports that he was moving production to Slovakia and he said that he had not been a hostage.

Liliane Martin, a technician, said that Mr Bacon had been held against his will initially. “He was very angry. The gendarmes came and he finally agreed to stay.”

Mr Bacon earned no sympathy because he was depicted in the media as a typical patron voyou, or rogue boss, who “tried to take English leave”, as Le Parisien put it. Comments on media websites vilified Mr Bacon and many called for his prosecution for breaching the strict labour laws.

The episode followed the detention three weeks ago of Prakash Patel, the British director of a Miko ice-cream factory in the eastern town of Saint-Dizier. The company, owned by Unilever, had announced 254 job losses.

Fear of la delocalisation has pushed President Sarkozy into protective mode. While the BRS episode was playing out yesterday he visited a steel plant, owned by the London-based Mittal company, in Lorraine to promise workers that the state would intervene to keep their jobs.

“My aim is to keep factories in France because a country which has no more factories is a country with no more economy,” Mr Sarkozy told workers. He promised that state funds would be used to subsidise the plant to save the 600 out of 1,100 jobs that are due to be cut by the ArcelorMittal company.

Under pressure from Mr Sarkozy, Lakshmi Mittal, whose company recently took over the Franco-European Arcelor group, has agreed to freeze the job closures until April.

Mr Sarkozy has stepped up his defence of French enterprise from foreign competition as the national mood has dropped to its most gloomy in the 20 years since household morale has been polled. Last week he warned foreign predators to stay away from the troubled Société Générale bank after a rogue-trading scandal. During his election campaign last spring Mr Sarkozy promised to “be the president who puts France in a position to resist offshoring of jobs”.

According to a government study, up to 35,000 French manufacturing jobs are being lost annually to foreign competition.

Fear and disgust with Anglo-Saxon free markets explained the widespread admiration for Jérôme Kerviel, the trader whose concealed market bets lost Société Générale €5 billion last month. Only 13 per cent of the public believed that he was to blame for the biggest trading loss in history, a poll for Le Figaro newspaper found.

The latest source of anguish is the emerging economies of the new European Union members of Central Europe. While public opinion is forcing Mr Sarkozy to use threats and state funds to protect French jobs his Government is eager to pass the reforms that are needed to lower labour costs. One possible option, which caused a public outcry when it was leaked last year, is to raise value added tax while lowering crippling payroll charges.

FRANCE FIRST

— After the ten-year ban on British beef exports was lifted in 1999, France continued its boycott and banned lorries carrying British beef, thus blocking exports to Italy, Portugal and Spain. The Tory MP William Cash said it was “typical of the nonsense we get from French protectionism”

— A list of “national champions” that France would protect, allegedly including Carrefour and Danone, drew a veiled attack from the European Commission President, Manuel Barroso, who said in 2006 that short-term protectionism of companies “usually ends up relegating them to the second division”

— President Sarkozy declared, “The word 'protection' is no longer taboo”, after the EU voted to remove “free and undistorted” competition as a core objective of the internal market

Sources: Times archive, agencies

Read Charles Bremner's Paris blog

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