If you're a boss in France, you better pack some clean underpants when you go into work. The latest poll shows that nearly half the French population think it's fine to kidnap the boss in protests over layoffs.

Now that might be just a labor tactic and very French but it does raise some interesting questions. Over the last month, workers at a 3M plant held their boss for more than 24 hours during a labor dispute, and workers at a Sony plant held their boss overnight to get a better severance packages (the AP picture above shows Luc Rousselet, the director of 3M's French unit, released after being held overnight by workers). At Caterpillar, executives were forced to listen to revolutionary rock music. Where will it end?

As the Independent warns, the danger is that this could lead to something a lot worse with people feeling that Nicolas Sarkozy's policies have hurt millions of people but have left a privileged few untouched.

Yes, it's very French. But as the Guardian says, it reflects a deeper problem that the G20 failed to fix. "The tactic, which became popular during the tumultuous days of 1968, of taking managers hostage is an extreme yet common measure beloved of the French worker. Reserved for when other, more orthodox, forms of protest are going nowhere, bossnapping is the ace card played by a workforce at the end of its tether."