Sacked Sony workers take bosses hostage

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.

The released the men after being given guarantees of new talks over the redundancy deal.

Serge Foucher, chief executive of Sony France, and Roland Bentz, the head of human resources, had been held by the workers since yesterday afternoon.

Sony is laying off 311 workers at the plant south of Bordeaux.