Society & Economy

SILENCE OVER THE VALLEY

How do big business interests see their work today, as factories move overseas and family-run industrial capitalism evolves into financial, globalized capitalism? Focusing on a factory in Nouzonville, France (near Charleville-Mézières), Marcel Trillat looks at how business owners are maneuvering their way through restructurings, job downsizing, and technological innovations.
In October 2006 the Nouzonville ironwork stamping factory, the last of its kind in the Ardennes region, was sold off after being stripped by the Americans who had bought it. Thirty short years ago, forty different subcontracting firms were working here at full tilt. High-tech industries with workers proud of the know-how and professional standards that had been handed down from generation to generation for centuries. Engineers whose creative talents had overcome every crisis that arose. Business dynasties who may have been authoritarian but were devoted to their factories and workers. An entire industrial world wiped out in just a few decades by the whirlwind of globalization. All are feeling despair, while bridling with revolt. Most have suffered the humiliation of unemployment, as they anguish over a future without prospects. We focus on a tiny slice of France, to show how the implacable race to hike profits is destroying lives, relations, and community bonds.