For weeks the walls of Paris and the sides of its ancient buses had been plastered with huge red posters bearing the reassuring message: "Saint-Gobain . . . a trustworthy trademark." Day after day, France's most aristocratic company, which was set up in 1665 by Louis XIV to make the glass for Versailles, blared its virtues in unheard-of fashion for French corporations—double-truck newspaper ads, regular radio and television appearances. Since Christmas, France has experienced what in the business world is something like the student-worker upheaval of last May and June. Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, Europe's largest—and by any measure its...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
