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PARIS Trouble in Automobiles The French automobile industry is under heavy pressure from both foreign competition and domestic maneuvers to avoid job cuts, which adds up to a crisis of confidence in the future of French automotive achievement. Something like a million Frenchmen and Frenchwomen depend directly or indirectly on the production of state-owned Renault and private-sector Peugeot, the world’s fifth and seventh largest car manufacturers respectively. In the last three years, in competition with American, German, and Japanese cars, these two companies have lost almost $1.2 billion. They badly need to cut their employee rolls and to modernize their equipment and management. About 230,000 employees work directly for these two firms, and the total will have to be reduced by 30 per cent in the coming years if they are to remain competitive. This is bad news for any economy but particularly bad for the French socialist government. French car makers are up front with their technology and design, but they have failed to generate sufficient profits to reinvigorate plants despite large loans from nationalized banks and from the government itself. By contrast, the American car industry cut its work force by one-third between 1979 and 1982; in the first six months of 1984 it was able to announce profits of $6.5 billion. To give an example of French job sensitivity, the government has rejected a plan devised by Citroën, a subsidiary of Peugeot, to cut its 44,000-man work force by six thousand, most of which would represent early retirements and voluntary departures. The official reason was that conditions in the industry and the market had not changed sufficiently to warrant such a step, but the real reason was the fear of inflicting another large-scale job loss on the French economy, not to mention French opinion.

PALERMO Being Sicilian Like many other European countries, Italy is plagued occasionally by demonstrations of regional feistiness. Lately, political groups in Sardinia have shown restiveness in respect to the central authority in Rome. But it was nevertheless a shock for the government to hear a leading Sicilian politician speak recently at a trade fair of “the Sicilian nation” and dismiss the rest of Italy as “a geographical expression waiting for nationhood.” Regional minister Carlo Vizzini chose to rebuke the speaker by implying that being Sicilian, sicilianitá, was another way of describing the struggle against backwardness, which, he continued, “ought to be conducted by using all the resources disposable to us and not by exhibitionism that is absolutely out of place.”

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PARIS Trouble in Automobiles The French automobile industry is under heavy pressure from both foreign competition and domestic maneuvers to avoid job cuts, which adds up to a crisis of confidence in the future of French automotive achievement. Something like a million Frenchmen and Frenchwomen depend directly or indirectly on the production of state-owned Renault and private-sector Peugeot, the world’s fifth and seventh largest car manufacturers respectively. In the last three years, in competition with American, German, and Japanese cars, these two companies have lost almost $1.2 billion. They badly need to cut their employee rolls and to modernize their equipment and management. About 230,000 employees work directly for these two firms, and the total will have to be reduced by 30 per cent in the coming years if they are to remain competitive. This is bad news for any economy but particularly bad for the French socialist government. French car makers are up front with their technology and design, but they have failed to generate sufficient profits to reinvigorate plants despite large loans from nationalized banks and from the government itself. By contrast, the American car industry cut its work force by one-third between 1979 and 1982; in the first six months of 1984 it was able to announce profits of $6.5 billion. To give an example of French job sensitivity, the government has rejected a plan devised by Citroën, a subsidiary of Peugeot, to cut its 44,000-man work force by six thousand, most of which would represent early retirements and voluntary departures. The official reason was that conditions in the industry and the market had not changed sufficiently to warrant such a step, but the real reason was the fear of inflicting another large-scale job loss on the French economy, not to mention French opinion.

PALERMO Being Sicilian Like many other European countries, Italy is plagued occasionally by demonstrations of regional feistiness. Lately, political groups in Sardinia have shown restiveness in respect to the central authority in Rome. But it was nevertheless a shock for the government to hear a leading Sicilian politician speak recently at a trade fair of “the Sicilian nation” and dismiss the rest of Italy as “a geographical expression waiting for nationhood.” Regional minister Carlo Vizzini chose to rebuke the speaker by implying that being Sicilian, sicilianitá, was another way of describing the struggle against backwardness, which, he continued, “ought to be conducted by using all the resources disposable to us and not by exhibitionism that is absolutely out of place.”