At the time of writing, AFP staff serving the agency’s French clients are on strike to demand that our CEO, Emmanuel Hoog, dissociate himself from an attempt by the UMP party of President Nicolas Sarkozy to change the company’s founding statutes.
M. Hoog has on several occasions expressed support for the draft law currently before parliament, which would change the composition of AFP’s board, enshrine a far-reaching contract with the state in AFP’s statutes and give the government of the day the right to dictate both the agency’s development strategy and the content of its key news services.
The CEO has stated that he has no right to tell the French parliament what it should do, but staff anger is amplified by the fact that the draft law is widely believed to have been written not by the politicians, but by one of M. Hoog’s close aides at AFP.
Herewith a summary of the changes proposed, with the key arguments being made for and against them:
Lire la suite / read the remainder of this post on my blog at http://www.sharp-words.com/notes/?p=492 .
Other info in English on the crisis at AFP:
- My trade union (SUD-AFP) http://sudafpengl.zeblog.com/ ;
- The web site I run for the joint AFP trade unions: http://www.sos-afp.org/en/new_storm