I think it is productive - a polite refusal would leave the minister with less information about the opinion of business leaders towards French policies. This way, he knows of a few specific issues that the CEO has with the idea of operating in France.
It's not just stereotypes, he gives examples of direct observations and interactions. You can attribute it to distaste for environmental controls or anything else, but the fact is that he and many other companies are passing up locating in France. Personally, the difficulty in firing people in the event of making a hiring mistake or having a cashflow issue would discourage me from ever setting up shop there, even though I think I would really enjoy living there otherwise.
French here. What I'm mostly concerned here is that the guy is basically saying : "we will produce tires in China for cheap and then sell them to you, because we can".
Europe has very low restrictions on imports, because it tries to implement free market as purely as possible. Many voices in France say we must be more aggressive on importation taxes, and that even US has a more protected market than us. After all, no west country can beat China in production costs.
Problem is, those voices are mostly from nationalist and xenophobic parties. Even current left wing french government would not touch total free market.
Now, there is the insult. Saying french workers work 3 hours a day is totally stupid. Normal work day is 8 hours for private sector, and 7 hours for public sector (but most public sector workers work 8 hours and then take a day off to compensate over worked days). The reason because average hours per day is low (see other comments) is because unemployment is high, so many people accept part time jobs and short term jobs.
Now, combine the cynical stance "we can produce cheap products in China and sell them to you with no penalties" and the insult, and you've got perfect food for nationalist parties. Once again.
> Saying French workers work 3 hours a day is totally stupid. Normal work day is 8 hours for private sector, and 7 hours for public sector (but most public sector workers work 8 hours and then take a day off to compensate over worked days)
He didn't say workers came to the factory for 3 hours then left. What he said was that out of the 7 hours of a work day, 1 is lost in breaks and lunch, 3 are spent chatting instead of working and there's only 3 ours of actual work being done.
If you read the comments on the article the vast majority actually support what that CEO says and disapprove the actions of the CGT.
