After the management of the Foxboro Eckardt technology company announced major workforce reductions at its Stuttgart site in Germany in January 2000, the works council organised successful resistance against these plans by using innovative forms of industrial action, such as demonstrations at the stock exchange and a "virtual demonstration" on the internet.
On 13 March 2000, after more than nine weeks of industrial action at the measurement and control technology producer Foxboro Eckardt GmbH, the works council and the management reached an agreement on future production at the company's location in Stuttgart, under which around 130 of the current 190 jobs will be safeguarded. The reduction of the workforce will be managed by voluntary departures or early retirement based on a "social plan" which was worked out by the IG Metall metalworkers' union and the regional metalworking employers' association, Verband der Metallindustrie Baden-Würtemberg, (VMI).
At the beginning of January 2000 the local management of Foxboro Eckardt, which is part of the UK-based global electronics and engineering group Invensys, announced a plan for a closure of large parts of the production at the Stuttgart location, which would have led to a reduction by two-thirds of the current workforce. According to the work council at Foxboro Eckardt, the implementation of this management plan would have meant not only that around 130 employees lost their jobs, but that sooner or late the whole Stuttgart site would have been shut down.
Immediately after the management's announcement, Foxboro Eckardt employees held a works meeting at which they announced their strong resistance to the plan and decided to organise industrial action. The works council accused the management of "bleeding" the company for the purpose of short-term shareholder interests while having no rational production strategy. Since the former Eckardt family establishment was taken over by the UK-owned Siebe plc in 1993, which in 1999 became part of the new Invensys corporation, the workforce at Stuttgart has been continually reduced from 1,240 employees in 1993 to 190 in 1999. Over the same period, Foxboro Eckardt had seven different presidents, four operational managers, seven sales managers and four human resource managers - a state of affairs the works council saw as representing "operational chaos" within the management. Moreover, the works council criticised the new management plans on the grounds that they contravened a company agreement on the "safeguarding of production sites" (Standortsicherungsvereinbarung) which was concluded in spring 1999 and contained a job guarantee over a period of three years.
From January to March 2000, the Foxboro Eckardt employees organised various protests and events. Since they used rather unusual and innovative forms of industrial action, they attracted considerable attention in the German media. The actions undertaken by the employees included the following:
- on 2 February 2000, the employees and their families hired a special tram, in which they travelled from the company to the Stuttgart stock exchange. Under the slogan "Invensys shares sinking in value against Foxboro Eckardt human capital shares", they protested against the "pure shareholder-value mentality" of the management;
- on 21 February, the works council called for protest e-mails to be sent to the top managers at Invensys at a certain time. After more than 1,000 supporters participated in this "virtual demonstration", internet access at Invensys headquarters was said to be blocked for at least eight hours. Moreover, the initiative was seen as a good opportunity to bring the protest directly to the desks of the managers responsible;
- on 28 February 2000, the works council together with the local IG Metall organisation organised a public event under the slogan "David's virtual slingshot", at which they discussed new conflict strategies for employees against global corporations;
- the work council established its own World-Wide Web homepage, which provided up-to-date information on industrial action at Foxboro Eckardt; and
- the work council, together with the IMU Economic Institute, developed an alternative production strategy which foresees a long-term safeguarding of the Stuttgart site while allowing for a reduction of the workforce from 190 to 130 employees. In talks with the local management, the latter reportedly signalled its support for the works council's plan.
Finally, on 9 March 2000 a delegation of employees attended the supervisory board meeting of the German Invensys holding company in Hamburg. After the chair of the works council, Martin Schwarz-Kocher, presented the works councillors' plan, the Invensys chief executive officer, Allen Yurko, is said to have become convinced on the spot of the need for a strengthening of the Stuttgart location and consented to most of the employees' proposal. The works council now believes that there is a real chance for safeguarding the Stuttgart site in the long term.