Thesis A firm that closes a site owes its workers more than the law requires
Where it stands
Over the years I've watched three firms in our district of Marseille close sites. In each case the company did what the law required: notice, severance at the legal rate, the formal consultation. In each case people who had given twenty or thirty years were treated like a cost line.
My thesis: a firm that closes a site owes its workers more than the legal minimum, as a matter of ethics, not just good public relations.
Three reasons. First, workers invest in a firm too. They learn skills that are worth a lot to this employer and little to anyone else, they buy houses near the site, and their children go to school there. That investment is real even if no contract records it. Second, a long working relationship creates expectations both sides rely on, and something is owed when one side ends it. Third, Simone Weil, who worked in a factory to understand workers, argued that people need roots, and that work which uproots them destroys something that wages can't replace.
What's owed? Longer notice, retraining, help finding work, honesty about the reasons and the timing. Not a promise never to close.
I expect objections from people who've run businesses. I'd like to hear them.