Despite several arguments having been raised against it, we do think that the origin of the wealth and of the success of a company resides in its employees bringing together their creativity, ideas and competencies.

To acquire this wealth, funds were invested and shareholders must have a return on them.

So, " social plans " are comparable to the selling off of the unique value constituted by employees making up the working force of a company.

Nevertheless, this should only be done when a company is in bankruptcy. This is then equivalent to selling off the family jewels.

Cutting heads off which is the essence of a social plan will reduce the number of mouths to feed but this can’t be done indefinitely as you can’t do much in the end with bodies without heads.

This method can also be compared to Molière’s physicians prescribing blood-letting for their patients. If they survived then they would have survived without the help of these physicians.

We do think that successfull companies are those which are taking care of their employees and which have identified the management of these " human resources " as the first priority.

The wealth of a country or of a society is not reflected anymore by the height of its blast furnaces but by the capacity of its members to capitalize on their knowledge thru intelligent communication, and thus giving value to their enterprises.

Everyone knows that a communication policy based on cooperation is always better than one based on clashes or agression. This is something which many people unaware of but one can hope that this will change rapidly.

The " Performance Plan " is rejected by the majority of Elf EP employees because, it will not only cause damage to the employees, it will also destroy value for the shareholder and threaten on the future of the company.