In a letter to French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg declining to reconsider buying a tire plant in the country, he wrote that France can keep its “so-called workers.” Taylor, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, laid out why his company walked away and won’t re-examine buying a plant that Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the largest U.S. tire- maker, is closing in France.  Titan International Inc. Chairman Maurice Taylor has got French backs up with his comments that the country’s workers earn high wages and work short hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three," Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English addressed to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg. "I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!” 
 
 Montebourg said earlier this month he was dropping efforts to get Quincy, Illinois-based Titan to take over some of Goodyear’s operations in Amiens, in northern France. "How stupid do you think we are?" He pointed out that Titan could have “learned and gained a lot from a presence in France,” noting that “the company you manage is 20 times smaller than Michelin, the genuinely international French leader, and 35 times less profitable.” 
 
 Goodyear Plan 
 
 Goodyear said Jan. 31 it will close its main French plant and cut its workforce in the country by 39 percent amid labor disputes and plunging auto demand in Europe. In a letter to Taylor dated today and released to the press, Montebourg said, “your comments that are as extremist as they are insulting testify to your perfect ignorance of our country, La France, and its strengths.” 
 
 In the two-page letter evoking La Fayette, the American landing in Normandy that “delivered us from the Nazis in 1944” and “an admiration” for the policies of President Barack Obama, Montebourg sought to show the close ties between France and the U.S. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co's Amiens Nord plant employs 1,250 people, who have been battling demands they work more shifts or accept layoffs. "Titan is the one with the money and the talent to produce tires. He does not care if the tires come from India or China and these governments are subsidizing them. “Goodyear tried for over four years to save part of the Amiens jobs that are some of the highest paid but the French unions and the French government did nothing but talk,” Taylor wrote, according to the letter published today by Les Echos.
– A US tire company boss has no interest in reconsidering his decision not to buy a French Goodyear factory that's set to close—and he's made his reasons perfectly clear. "You can keep the so-called workers," Maurice "The Grizz" Taylor of Titan International wrote to France's industry minister, per Reuters. Despite high pay, French workers do just three hours of work per day, Taylor argued. "They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three, and work for three." "I told the French union workers this to their faces," he noted. "They told me that’s the French way!" Industry minister Arnaud Montebourg had been hoping Titan might buy the Amiens factory, which employs about 1,200, Bloomberg reports. "Sir, your letter says you want Titan to start a discussion," wrote Taylor, a 1996 Republican presidential candidate who has, among other things, urged an end to sick pay for government workers. "How stupid do you think we are? Titan is the one with the money and the talent to produce tires. What does the crazy union have? It has the French government."