We read or hear a lot about the rise of worldwide unemployment, while not so much on the different social reactions to the loss of jobs or incomes across the world. Most of the little we know is vague or impressionistic- that Americans are rather tolerant about the ambushes of capitalism; that the French cherish their revolutionary heritage and still practice rebellion occasionally; that Germans dislike striking; that Spanish anarchists have quieted down; and so on and so forth. Stereotypes are misleading, although they often describe realities or are ultimately vindicated by facts.

Recently, employees of a number of French companies detained or even kidnapped their managers to prevent them from terminating jobs or transferring operations elsewhere. In France and Italy, industrial workers, miners and combative farmers tend to blockade highways, airports and railroad stations in order to forcibly affirm their claims. They also climb on roofs, cranes and other tall structures, install themselves there for days and nights in the cold, so reporters and cameras can rush to report on their daredevil protests. Things like these seem to be uncommon, say, in Scandinavia.

Some situations, while understandable from a human perspective, challenge common sense. For years, Fiat in Italy and Renault in France have been moving production to countries where labor and/or other costs are lower. Naturally, employees resist moves that destroy their jobs. But in specific cases, their demands border on the absurd. It’s common knowledge that the world automotive industry expanded too much, and that overcapacity became huge. Consequently, output had to be reduced. In the case of the Fiat plant in Termini Imerese, Sicily, the company has insisted that the costs of making cars there are so exorbitant that paying salaries and taxes without making cars would lower the losses of said plant. The result? The Termini Imerese operation will be terminated in a year or so. The management will now strive to determine a line of production that is not focused on automobile production. This is for the additional reason that many urban administrations everywhere are discouraging or even forbidding car traffic in city centers as to limit pollution. In the meantime, Fiat shut all her plants in Italy for two weeks.

The Termini Imerese unions simply said no- the plant must continue to produce cars that don’t sell, or that sell at a heavy loss. They argue that for a whole century, Fiat received giant subsidies from the government, so in the current crisis the company must return what received. Also, that the automotive orientation of the local factory must remain, even if alternatives are offered. Eventually unionized workers risk losing everything, should any prospective buyer of the plant conclude that said workforce is unreasonably combative.

At Pomigliano, in Southern Italy, at the site of another Fiat plant, a number of workers even threatened to set themselves on fire, should their jobs disappear.  Suicide is such a tragedy that no facetious remark is permissible. However, it’s evident that they would not accept working in nearby farms and plantations (where black laborers toil, but are increasingly discriminated), even if government subsidies would significantly add to farm wages. Picking oranges is heavy work, pressing keys on car-making robots is not.

Suicidal threats are something that one would expect in India (where some persons are said to kill themselves so that remorse will punish their enemies), or in Japan, where stoic, heroic sacrifices are a national tradition, rather than in sunny Pomigliano, not far from Naples. Manufacturing activities have spread so much worldwide that situations like Pomigliano, Termini Imerese and the kidnapping of French managers may happen everywhere. Whether behavior to defend jobs and incomes are going to stay different or become similar is a question that can only get vague and tentative answers.