French workers win redundancy fight

Staff who threatened to blow up machinery in a construction equipment plant in southwest France in a row over redundancy payments have had their severance money increased. The 53 staff at JLG Industries in Tonneins will receive $42,000 for being made redundant after placing gas canisters in front of the plant and threatening to detonate them. The workers at the factory, a subsidiary of US firm Oshkosh, were the third group of French workers this week to threaten to set off explosions in order to get their complaints heard. Christian Amadio, the head of the works council at JLG said: "It's shame we had to go so far to obtain a result".