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US CEO Says French Workers Have Three-Hour Work Day
First time accepted submitter M3.14 writes "In a letter addressed to French Industrial Renewal Minister, Maurice Taylor, chief executive of Titan, writes (French article with English letter) that it would be stupid to buy any factory in France since workers don't really work full time. He'd rather buy cheap factories in India and China instead and import tires back to France. He writes, 'They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!'"
I'm sorry to say, but a lot of the French stereotypes are true. My company purchased over 30 million dollars from a said French company. Their machines and equipment are top notch, high tech, and top of the line. However, the way they treated me (their client) was like absolute dog shit. Getting support for their machines was a nightmare. Most of their workforce would always have some long vacation and petty excuses not to do any work. I visited their manufacturing plant, parked in someones space, and some douchebag parked his vehicle behind my vehicle because he was "angry" at me taking his special parking spot. I of course warned them if this happened again, they would be receiving all their equipment back. Of course they all apologized. But, this nonsense never stopped. When I called for their support engineers to try to fix a problem with one of their machines shutting off 10 times a day, they were always unavailable for through out the entire day except for early morning. If you missed this window, you would never be able to speak to them at all. When I complained about it, they would reply with some rude manner that I was just some gun totting American that wanted his way (I speak French fluently, but they always forgot about that). Really, it's quite true they work for literally 3 hours a day and have literally 2 hour lunch breaks.
Suffice to say, I made the decision and sent all their equipment back for this lousy practice on the basis of them breaking their contractual duties. They immediately sent the President and Vice President of the company (With a bunch of idiotic French lawyers) to try to beg me to stay with them and not send the equipment back (Over 30+ million dollars worth plus all the labor costs). I of course refused, because I asked them to stop this nonsense before kindly, I already knew it would still continue, even with their promises. I ended up going to their German competitors which we're quite happy to work with, they answer their phones, they don't disappear and they're eager to solve problems.
So yes, what he says is fucking true.
The problem is that real wages are not keeping up with the levels of productivity increases that technology and knowledge should afford. It hasn't always been this way - look at the chart here. You'll see that after 1971 the real share of productivity that the workers saw went away. Unions didn't suddenly crumble in 1971 but the US Dollar did, and that delta in money isn't just evaporating.
The problem is 1971 is when Nixon put the country on a fiat money system (probably his and Johnson's fault, but that's a separate issue). The problem with that is that with a fiat currency and Keynesian central bankers, steady inflation is a guarantee in the economy. If you have wealth (capital) then you're going to want to protect it, and that means you can no longer hold your wealth in your local bank, making a moderate level of interest while protecting your holdings. If you don't want to lose real value every year, that money now needs to be invested in financial instruments (stocks, bonds, commodities, annuities - whatever Wall Street is selling) that return at a higher rate than inflation.
Suddenly capital is no longer available for local lending (due to reserve requirements), money that would have otherwise been spent in the local economy is now gone almost immediately (where does that that 10% of your salary into 401(k) match go, eh?). Wealth that was previously re-invested in the local economy in a healthy cycle is now shipped off, leaving capitalism broken on the local level. And with the 70's stagflation the effect was rather sudden, and people had no recourse. Over time the expectations set them have become permanent, and the workers aren't able to solve the problem themselves anymore (short of a massive general strike, anyway).
This is the same reason trickle-down economics doesn't work anymore - tax cuts at the top don't flow to the workers, they flow to Wall Street (at least to any measurable degree of what they used to). The median hourly wage, in real terms, would be about $37/hr, if trends had kept going as they had for the bulk of the 20th Century before 1971.
American workers are being systematically screwed out of their earnings for the benefit of the financial sector (the new "robber barons") and the legal tender act ensures that anybody who tries to offer a stable currency as an alternative will get SWAT-raided. It's really no wonder that by any honest measure we're in an economic depression. The odds of it getting any better before a total monetary crash are, unfortunately, quite slim.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I lived in France for years, and I dearly love France and the French, but his story rings true to me.
It's not that the French are lazy or incompetent, it's that they suffer from a collective "can't do" attitude.
You must have experienced this everywhere from restaurants to shops to plumbers, and particularly from anyone who sits behind a desk: nothing is possible, the answer is (almost) always "non".
And don't get me started on French corporate hierarchy, where seniority is determined by age, time served, or nepotism. It's just not possible to get a foot in the door, work bloody hard, show your competence and advance quickly like it is in Britain and the US.
I'm not talking about this not being possible for a foreigner, but for French people.
Read about the French 'Barrez-vous!' (Get out!) movement, which advises young French people just to leave France to escape the ossified hierarchical culture:
http://barrez-vo2.us/site/
I still love France though, and intend to go back despite these problems.
A classic example of this was Joe the Plumber in the 2008 campaign. Here was a guy making $40K a year and when he got the ONCE IN A LIFETIME opportunity to ask a potential President a question, he didn't even use his own financial data! Spoon fed by partisan radio, he threw out what was the de facto standard net income for EVERY small business which was of course the exact $250K that was the cutoff for Obama's planned tax hike.
He didn't say, I make $40K what are you going to do for me? He said, I'm going to buy my boss's company (with money he didn't have) and instantly make the convenient $250K/year. Not $200K, not $300K, not $240K, not 251K, but EXACTLY $250K/year lol. One half is so dissociated from their own economic situation by political spinmeisters that they don't even associate with their own needs! That's like Thulsa Doom getting the priestess to jump off the cliff wall!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
if you work a solid 8 hours a day and get your minimum wage you're still not going to beat chinese workers. so no, i don't think if i work 2 hours a week i deserve to get paid more than starving chinese people, but i still bargain for the best deal i can get.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
What would you cut, and why? Genuine question. Feel free to give as detailed an answer as possible.
Oh, fuck! I live in Portugal, which has more or less the same labour laws as Germany. But here, companies take it for granted that we work extra time without being paid for it (which is illegal). I used to work extra time a lot in my current company. I worked many, many weekends, I postponed vacations to deliver projects, in the end, I got a pat in the back and they told me "good boy". So I stopped. Now I work a regular work week. With an occasional crunch now and then, because I decide to do so in any particular conditions. Sorry guys, I have a family. I have a life.
Here, many people are bullied into working extra for free. I know lots of people in the services sector that live only for working. In industry it's not so easy to pull this one off because unions still carry some weight in those areas. Banks force people to work 12 hours a day. Bank employees are trained to evade Labour Authority inspections. Several times, banks are caught, they pay the fines, and keep on doing the same thing. In their calculations, it's cheaper.
The law here requires people to take 22 paid vacation days every year. Vacation days can not be traded by money. I have always seen people that don't take their full vacation time, year after year. And I've seen people being bullied not to take vacations.
In a company I have worked for years ago, I was bullied to postpone vacations when I already had my reservations made and plain tickets bought. They used to try that on everybody because people would postpone again and again, and end up not taking the vacation days. I said NO and fell out of favour with the bosses, that started picking on me constantly after that. I got another job and said goodbye. But I'm a computer engineer. Most people can't find jobs easily, the pay is usually very low and the ubiquity of illegal "temporary" contracts makes everybody submissive, as they can lose their job at a moment's notice.
They think they're so smart doing all this shit. What do they get? Portuguese productivity is among the lowest ones in the developed world. All they get is a bunch of unhappy and anxious employees that can't focus and work efficiently. People throw their health and their family well-being in the toilet for a company that will, in its turn, throw them in the toilet when they see fit. Managers don't have any incentive to do a good job of managing and organising because they can always squeeze some more work from their employees. Hence, management positions are not regarded as places of responsibility, but privilege. As a society, we're sick.
People that emigrate to other countries in Europe (I'm talking about a lot of people in the latest years) tell me that they make a lot more money than in Portugal, work less hours, have a much better work-life balance and get more respect by their company, specially if they are qualified workers. After a while, they don't consider coming back any more. Of course, if they're not hired by a Portuguese company to go abroad. In that case, the shit is the same as here, with the disadvantage of being away from their family and friends.
Sometimes I hear ignorant people saying: "Portuguese are lazy! If we did like the Germans and work 14 hours a day, we wouldn't have gotten in this situation!". When I tell them that in almost every country in Europe people work less hours a day and less days a year, and yet they're a lot richer than us, these fucks almost choke on their own stupidity.
We have to think, what kind of society do we want to live in? Do you want to have the life of a Portuguese worker? It doesn't work, see? Productivity is shit, industry and agriculture have gone away just the same, little added-value, little innovation, no future.
The brutal suppression of the unions was probably more influential than the individualist culture. But then if you grew up with the US education system you wouldn't know about that redacted part of your history.
Yes x100. My sister was an outstanding teacher for 18 years ... with math as a specialty. Then she got divorced and realized, "Oh crap I can't afford to keep teaching without someone else supplementing my income." So she went back to serving food, was soon tapped to be a local and then regional trainer, and soon after put into the management program. Now she's making a decent living wage without the physical demands (her age made lugging trays around for 8 hours / 6 days a week unsustainable). The ultimate irony IMO is that her teach abilities, and her work ethic, are what drive her rise to management so quickly. I don't know what number $$$ would have conviced her to stay in teaching, but it was a not even a difficult calculation to make when she was looking to rebuild her life.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Hell, I never took vacation... maybe 3 or 4 days in the last year. I got laid off anyway, never mind a promotion. I got no severance pay, but they gave me 70% of my remaining vacation time in cash.
The lesson is: use your vacation. You may not get a chance later.
I can easy one up that and drive the point home. My ex-father in law never called in sick or took vacation. He died at 48. The paycheck he got for the unused vacation time had no taxes taken out. His wife who died two years later had to pay a ton in taxes because of that. On his death bed, I showed him pictures of a recent vacation I had and he wished he had done more of that than work. Who wouldn't? And since you never know when your last day is take the time now if you can.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain