French workers threaten to blow up ailing brewery

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) -- Angry French brewery employees, taking their cue from textile workers who dumped acid in a river, took a manager hostage on Wednesday and threatened to blow up their plant to protest at its impending closure.

The workers at the Adelshoffen brewery near the eastern town of Strasbourg held the personnel manager hostage for several hours before releasing him. They said they would blow up gas containers unless he opened talks within 24 hours.

A blast could trigger a bigger explosion of the brewery's stocks of ammonia, used for refrigeration.

Owners Sogebra, the French branch of Dutch firm Heineken, have said the unprofitable brewery will close by the end of this year and have proposed to transfer the 101 staff to other factories.

It was the second time in days disgruntled French workers had threatened to destroy a factory to stave off layoffs.

Staff at the Cellatex textile factory in the eastern town of Givet threatened earlier this week to blow it up, then dumped thousands of litres of sulfuric acid into a stream, turning it blood red.

Emergency workers threw down sand barriers to stop the toxic acid flowing into the River Meuse, which also runs through Benelux countries.

Cellatex unions and government representatives scheduled a meeting later in the day to try to solve the dispute. Unions demand that the 153 staff be paid 150,000 francs ($21,000) redundancy compensation each and full wages for at least two years after the factory closes down.

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