Business managers who are taken hostage at their companies by disgruntled workers must defy them and refuse to “start negotiations with a gun at the head”, the leader of a French business federation said today.

Striking French workers took their boss hostage today in an effort to get improved redundancy terms.

Sacked factory workers at a Sony factory in south-west France today released two executives they had taken hostage in protest at the size of their redundancy payments.