Employment rules and trade-union pressure frustrate efforts to change working practices or cut costs.
The country's main trade-union confederation, Cosatu, which represents 1.7m workers, hints that it may join in.
Wise readers will skip the exhaustive descriptions of the trade-union politics that these indignities prompted.
The episode provides more evidence that trade-union federations and big business are a dangerous cocktail.
In Britain Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party, owes his job to trade-union votes.
By contrast, the San Bernardo factory where Ford builds its Fiesta is in a trade-union stronghold.
But Park In Sang, the president of the largest trade-union federation, wants a better deal.
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Sergio Cofferati, who leads Italy's largest trade-union group, performs punchily on the hustings but is too left-wing.
Sergio Cofferati, head of Italy's biggest trade-union federation, is not dead set against part-time work and short-term contracts.
AFL-CIO, America's biggest trade-union group, has weakened its opposition to the China bill.
Moreover, the opposition parties were dominated by media, business and trade-union leaders and by pressure groups, rather than by politicians.
Mr Johnson, once a canny trade-union leader, was minister for higher education two years ago when Parliament approved top-up fees.
Still pending are some tough measures to tighten pension rules and trade-union health schemes, which may be imposed by decree.
By this stage, Mr Giuliani would probably have clouted several trade-union leaders.
And codes of conduct are always liable to morph into trade-union rulebooks.
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As finance minister, she is blamed for rising inflation and trade-union militancy, both triggered by the floating of the Sri Lankan rupee.
TRADE-UNION membership in Germany, as in the rest of Europe, is shrinking.
The last Labour government similarly legislated for compulsory trade-union recognition in 1975.
As in other European countries, trade-union clout in Germany is generally weakening.
AFL-CIO, America's largest trade-union group, that, if elected president in November, he would tack labour and environmental clauses on to future trade deals.
There has already been a huge trade-union backlash against what, by international standards, have been decidedly modest job cuts by a few large firms.
The SPD is the political home of Germany's powerful trade-union movement.
Germany's weighty trade-union federation has finally thrown its weight behind him.
The defection would also have financial implications for America's trade-union body.
How odd, then, that trade-union influence has rarely been so strong.
That row is still simmering: Colombia's National Trade-Union School, an NGO, says the government has yet to implement nine of its 37 commitments in this area.
But in countries like Italy, France and Greece, trade-union opposition to pension reform is so fervent that it can hamstring governments and even, on occasions, bring them down.
It may also be due partly to prejudice: Mr Cardoso is an ex-professor, Mr da Silva a former lathe operator and trade-union leader who never went to university.
That finally prompted Lula, a former trade-union leader, to act.
Already the main trade-union federation, which has emerged as an influential political force in the absence of strong opposition parties, has called for strikes and wage increases in certain sectors.
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