PARIS (AFP) - Nestle Waters said it might sell Perrier, the iconic French mineral water, while keeping options including a mooted outsourcing on tap.
The announcement highlighted a clash between the subsidiary of Swiss food giant Nestle and France's most powerful trade union, the communist-backed Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT).
In a statement, Nestle Waters said Perrier's central works council had been "informed of the possibility of selling the Perrier division, a project that will be examined along with others".
It was released as the council met near Paris amid speculation Perrier would be sold because the CGT and another union had rejected an early retirement plan for more than 1,000 workers.
Richard Girardot, president of Nestle Waters France, told AFP that selling Perrier was currently the favored option.
Nestle Waters also said it might turn various French industrial facilities as well as the French headquarters into autonomous subsidiaries, "so as better to develop specific organisational and productivity programmes".
Perrier, the self-proclaimed "champagne of waters," has failed to regain the fizz of 1989 when it filled around 1.2 billion bottles of sparkling mineral water, to which natural gas is added, at its source in Vergeze, southern France.
In 1990, a US lab found minute traces of benzene -- a carcinogen -- in the water, forcing Perrier to pull 280 million bottles from the market.
Nestle Waters bought the company two years later.
A union delegate told AFP that management was now considering "a range of choices concerning the future of Perrier and Nestle Waters in general".
The group is the world's leading distributor of bottled water, with brands like Poland Spring, Vittel and San Pellegrino contributing to annual sales of more than five billion euros (six billion dollars) last year.
The agenda for Wednesday's meeting said Nestle would unveil a "new orientation given the impossibility of putting into effect" an early retirement plan announced in January that concerned 1,047 Perrier workers of a total 4,100.
In July, the majority CGT union along with Force Ouvriere (FO) had rejected the plan, exercising their right of refusal following nine months of negotiations.
CFE-CGC representative Barnard Marcy pleaded Wednesday with both the CGT and management to return to the bargaining table.
"We call on the conscience and responsibility of the two main partners, the management and the CGT, to put the early retirement plan back on the table," he told reporters with tears in his eyes.
But Girardot later told AFP: "We refuse to return to the negotiating table.
"The CGT must indicate that it 'rejects its right of refusal', approve the original project and create no obstacles to its application."
GCT delegate Jean-Paul Franc called that position "blackmail", adding: "We remain at their disposal for negotiations aimed at reaching an acceptable agreement."
But Nestle Waters has also floated the idea of moving production to another source, echoing threats by other western European groups to lower costs by relocating elsewhere on the continent or to Asia or Africa.
In response, the CGT is searching for a patent believed to have been filed in the early 1900s under which only mineral water from the source in Vergeze may be used by the brand.