What's amusing about the letter is that it shows how even executives buy into cultural stereotypes to justify their activities.
The substance of the letter is this: we'd rather buy an Indian or Chinese tire company to get the government subsidies and take advantage of the low cost of labor.
The stuff about French workers only working three hours a day is fluff, and on top of that almost certainly exaggerated out of context and/or apocryphal.
See: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance/
The French work on average 1,554 hours per year, about 10% lower than the OECD average of 1,749. Is that 10% breaking the backs of French tire manufacturing? Of course not. Consider that South Koreans work on average 2,193 hours per year, a staggering 25% higher than the OECD average. Why doesn't Titan manufacture tires in South Korea?
The answer is that relatively small differences in the number of hours people worked aren't driving the economics here. The French work somewhat less than say Americans, but also make somewhat less money than say Americans (last I checked, manufacturing jobs paid on an hourly basis). To be accurate, the letter could have said: "we won't manufacture tires in France because the French work 6.5 hours per day on average versus 7.5 per day for Americans." But that would have sounded stupid. Hence the need to exaggerate and say: "the French only work 3 hours per day!"
What's driving the economics is, as the letter points out, $1/hour wages in China or India, where people are happy to get so little money because those countries are poor and have low standards of living relative to western countries. The rest is just handwaving and fluff.