Slashdot Mirror
New French Law Prohibits After-Hours Work Emails
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Lucy Mangan reports at The Guardian that a new labor agreement in France means that employees must ignore their bosses' work emails once they are out of the office and relaxing at home – even on their smartphones. Under the deal, which affects a million employees in the technology and consultancy sectors (including the French arms of Google, Facebook, and Deloitte), employees will also have to resist the temptation to look at work-related material on their computers or smartphones – or any other kind of malevolent intrusion into the time they have been nationally mandated to spend on whatever the French call la dolce vita. "We must also measure digital working time," says Michel De La Force, chairman of the General Confederation of Managers. "We can admit extra work in exceptional circumstances but we must always come back to what is normal, which is to unplug, to stop being permanently at work." However critics say it will impose further red tape on French businesses, which already face some of the world's tightest labor laws." (Continues)
"However according to Simon Kelner French productivity levels outstrip those of Britain and Germany, and French satisfaction with their quality of life is above the OECD average. "No wonder, we may say. We'd all like to take a couple of hours off for lunch, washed down with a nice glass of Côtes du Rhône, and then switch our phones off as soon as we leave work. It's just that our bosses won't let us.""
If I'm off the clock, I should be able to completely ignore work and everything work-related. I should be able to leave my work smartphone in the office.
Isn't that Italian?
If you want to stop after hours emails, make it illegal for the boss to SEND the email in the first place.
Their is automatic evidence (timestamp) and it doesn't put an employee between the law and un-written work rules where the employee is damned either way.
Tight labour laws are not something to be feared.
I already ignore my bosses' emails during working hours.
Ah, so this explains why Silicon Valley is located in France.
Seriously, if someone wants to work crazy hours, why not let them?
I had that phase in my career, and it paid off. I'm in a different phase now. I just choose not to work after hours. If my employer didn't like that, I'd have found a better job by now. Same thing for travel - I used to travel a ton. Now I don't want to, and so I found a place to work with no travel. I'm a grownup, I can take care of myself, thank-you-very-much.
get rid of salary pay / make it have a high level before you get out of having to pay OT.
once workers start billing OT for doing work stuff at home then it will stop.
Maybe some people just use expressions in a foreign language.
eg. Can you think of any Latin words used by lawyers? Latin's been dead for thousands of years!
No sig today...
Well colour me puzzled. Surely the expression "whatever the French call la dolce vita" demonstrates that, whatever the French do call it, they don't call it la dolce vita? So he knows it's not a French expression, he just doesn't know what the equivalent expression in French is.
Well done for supplying the French equivalent.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
That's good for workers in the short term, it really is ridiculous how much work intrudes into our personal lives anymore, to where a company can practically own you; I can somewhat relate, having recently been made to go "on call" at work but where we're not really "on call" but expected to actively monitor 40 sites for a week, with a 4 week rotation among employees (and compensation for this new duty.. what's that? Only happens if we actually engage an issue, we're not paid for just the monitoring) I love how an employer can just change the terms of your employment, but it's not like I can walk in and declare I'm now going to make $8,000 more a year. BTW, we have a union, they don't do squat.. they just hit you for dues. ...and provide overtime pay, definitely.
OTOH, this will ultimately put French businesses at a serious disadvantage in competing with other countrys' businesses, as their response time to an issue may be greatly reduced.
Rather than outright ban it, maybe just some solid restrictions on say, 11pm to 6am as off limits.. or alternating weeks or something
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
France fails at having an Internationally competitive workforce.
Don't be ridiculous, France has one of the most productive workforces in the world (in GDP/worker and GDP/hour worked).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
It isn't forbidden to read emails, it is forbidden for employers to require the employees to read them or be reachable through their personal or company phone.
Employees must be allowed to have a 11h "blackout" between two consecutive working days and 35h during weekends.
If an employee wants to read emails and do extra work, it's up to him, but it can't be imposed.
And this is an agreement just for some business types (mainly IT related), not everyone.
In the 1980's, IBM (among others) invested lots of money to have legislation passed that makes programmers, engineers, and sysadmins into "salaried professionals" so that they wouldn't have to pay overtime.
The only way that could possibly be reversed is a group larger and more powerful than the owners of tech companies fighting to reverse it; that is to say, the organized tech workers will have fight for our own standard of living. We won't be able to do that until we are actually organized, though. Perhaps the sporadically striking fast food workers who were previously thought to be powerless can set an example for us.
Ah, yes! Let's make forced overtime the employees fault!
Worst. Signature. Ever.
My boss has started using this, because he knows that if I see an email come in at 10pm, I will open it on my phone, read it, and then promptly forget about it before I get to work the next morning.
How about mandatory pee breaks?
A staggering number of people commenting here appear not to understand English, let alone French or Italian.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
A fine? And if the business is willing to pay it as the cost of doing business?
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Would anyone who reads French be able to give a less jovial and more accurate interpretation of what the French article says?
Call me cynical, but I have a hunch we may not be getting the full story from the Guardian's "article."
Also:
New French Law Prohibits After-Hours Work Emails
It's not a law.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Yes, but are their business units in France the ones that do well? Or is their satellite offices in other countries like the UK and Germany that pick up the slack?
Reading the original article on Les Echos.fr, it seems to me this is not law but an agreement between a coalition of enterprise owners and the unions - they've signed an agreement to implement this.
A third union that didn't sign, the CGT, is actually deploring the fact that it still has a loophole allowing it to be ignored, and a previous agreement between the two camps to try and improve working conditions was struck down by a court of law:
French journalistic style is not as easy to decipher as English-language journalism -- the French style is very fond of appearing as literary as possible. I'll post extra translations at some point if anybody wants.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
"France fails at having an Internationally competitive workforce."
Good for them. In the race to the bottom, France's "failure" sounds more fun than being the winner.
Many people seem to enjoy strict segregation of work and personal life. I don't. I like flexibility; I like being able to leave work for a few hours in the middle of the day to go to a kids' school play, or go for a bike ride, or go skiing (next winter I'll be working from home full-time, 20 minutes from a ski resort; I'm seriously planning to be skiing from 9-11 AM almost daily) or whatever. I like being able to, with a totally clear conscience, spend an hour reading and posting on slashdot or G+ or whatever. I also like being able to work in the evening when inspiration strikes, or to make up for time spent away from work during the day, or for whatever reason. Heck, maybe I just want to and for whatever reason don't have anything better to do just then.
I don't live to work, but I like my work, and I don't like drawing a sharp line separating work and non-work. I think that sort of separation is a recent invention anyway; historically work has been a part of life rather than walled off into a particular portion of each day. Of course, I have no objection to people who prefer to manage their work/life balance by sharply separating them. If that what works for them, more power to them. It's not my preference, though, and it's not the only way to balance the two. It's not something that should be legislated.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Mod this guy up because he actuall read all the words and demonstrated the ability to grok basic sentence structure.
www.wavefront-av.com
If whatever work French employers want done can be done in English and online, I am right here ready to do it! I've been unemployed for a while now and would rather be working.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
Back in a world with logic, just tell people not to check their e-mail after hours. It's actually a lot simpler to not do something than it is to do something.
One point that is not in the original Guardian article is that this is a proposal only, and a proposal that only applies to French companies that are part of the "Syntec" work agreement.
- Huh?
Yes, in France, companies can adhere to negociated work agreements (named "accord") that define more precisely than the French laws what is possible and is not possible. Syntec is one such agreement, and it pretty much covers the vast majority of IT firms.
Now... What you, gentle reader, need to know, is that that the Syntec agreement is not really that nice to IT employees, as it also defines a lot of things (unpaid overtime, etc.) that are not in the interests of the workers, to say the least. And many IT firms choose not to belong to Syntec, but instead to one of the "accords" that are even more constraining. The company I work with (''it-whose-name-shall-not-ever-be-said-aloud'') belongs to an "accord" that is used to define rules... for the steel industry.
And before anyone starts foaming at the mouth about how French workers are lazy and only work 35h per week: I don't know ANYONE, and I mean ANYONE in France who works 35 hours per week, except maybe a few government employees and McDonald's workers. Yes, I know a lot of people in France who work much longer than that and, yes, I am one of them. Just so you know.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I want the flexibility to make my own rules with my employer. Sure, I am on call but I make $40K more than my peers so, to me, it's worth it. I also expect to go home at night and order from 24/7 websites so I am guessing other employers require some of their workers to be on call like me. It's not perfect but I own it, not some government douche who thinks he is doing me a favor.
In the 1980's, IBM (among others) invested lots of money to have legislation passed that makes programmers, engineers, and sysadmins into "salaried professionals" so that they wouldn't have to pay overtime.
What legislation was this specifically that forced these folks to be "salaried" because I never heard of such a thing?
Or perhaps la vie fade (dolce has a wide range of meaning).
Maybe some people just use expressions in a foreign language.
Sacrebleu!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I would despise living under a regime that prohibited me working if that's what I wanted to do.
Or, you know we could negotiate a salary that we are happy with given the job descriptions we are applying for. Since I make between 2 and 3 times the median wage I'm ok with answering some emails off hours or waking up to a page once every 6 months due to a system problem. Then again I'm a tech lead and hence management so I'd be exempt under just about any rules =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
No, what this not-a-law does is makes it harder for your boss to sack you for not doing work outside working hours.
If you want to try and climb the slippery pole by brownnosing, feel free.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
...It is only natural that they abolish the after-work email.
See what that gets you after a few years when your salary has effectively dropped 5% due to raises failing to keep pace with inflation. Where do you turn when all the jobs in town are shit and your pay is stagnating? There's not always an individual option available.
At that point, the only option left will be collective action against the company. The only question remaining is how long it will take for tech workers to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that half of them will never afford retirement at the current pace of things.
Well this agreement is actualy only for "management".
Of course it doesn't apply to people "on call", as long as "on call" is limited to a certain number of days/year.
And it's only a limit on what you can be required to do, it doesn't limit what you can do of your own free will.
(A page every six months. You lucky bastard. I dream of only getting a page once every six months).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
It depends on the salary, pay and the level of the employees. If we force lowly paid workers to answer email during off hours, certainly they should be compensated for it. But, on the other hand, there are software professionals making 2 times median wages or more. People who are paid salary compared to that of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, (I remember Greenspan was drawing a salary of 140K per year in Washington DC. Not sure what it is now), they can answer email, log in via vpn and do more work.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is based on the empiraclly disproven notion that if you restrict work hours that more people will get hired because, hey, the work's still gotta get done, right?
Even after this was repeatedly demonstrated as wrong (unemployment goes up) voters elected to keep the rules. But one shouldn't think for a microsecond it's about anything remotely resembling "increasing employment".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Or perhaps la vie fade (dolce has a wide range of meaning).
The "boring, unseasoned, tasteless life"?
Zow, that's a weird translation.
"La dolce vita" (the film) was released in France as "La Douceur de vivre".
Douceur: softness/sweetness/gentleness/smoothness
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Highest paid federal employees: http://xfinity.comcast.net/sli...
This gives mean wages instead of median, but still better than nothing. Software professional wages: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current...
I would guess people making more than 150K can be expected to answer email at off hours without additional compensation. Part of the job. But at some point below, may be below 100K or so, they should be compensated.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sorry, that was 1996. I don't think it "forced" anyone to become salaried on its own, but it did give employers the right to deny overtime.
Between equal rights, force decides; unorganized workers have basically no force compared to the company.
http://www.generalcounsellaw.c...
I dream of only getting a page once every six months).
That's too bad. We have two teams where I work. Mine, which rarely deals with off-hours calls (about once every six months), and the other, which gets woken up multiple times per week. The difference is root cause analysis and fixing broken stuff. How does your manager approach that?
New French Law Prohibits After-Hours Work Emails.
New French Law Prohibits After-Hours Work.
New French Law Prohibits Work Emails.
New French Law Prohibits Work.
Are you kidding?! Salary offers much better protection than hourly work. Hourly wages are for non-thinking/production positions, and salary is for professional/management. A salary (exempt status) provides flexibility for how and when you do your work as should be done for a professional.
Now, if you are help desk or spend your life doing TPS reports in a small cube, you really should be non-exempt... But nobody should aspire to non-exempt status career in the tech world.
There are abuses on both sides, but it really comes down to find a different job if you don't like the balance of hours, responsibility, and pay.
Its called courrier electronique.
Have gnu, will travel.
co-workers who are willing to go beyond the strict 9-5 will get all the brownie points and the bigger raise and the better office.
Or perhaps they will just continue to be abused.
Depends on the individual circumstance.
I am my manager.
Small company.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The OP said "whatever the French call la dolce vita" as in "I don't know the words the French might use, but there's a phrase 'la dolce vita', which is Italian; I'm sure the French have a similar phrase, I just don't happen to know it".
This is a Real Life Scenario:
About half of our company's revenue comes from helping volunteer organizations manage their operations. Specifically, volunteer-driven youth sports leagues.
This is great in several respects for us:
- Most everyone we work with is super nice. 'High stakes' here versus, say, finance or law ... the boiling point is not often reached.
- The primary beneficiary of what we do is children.
- We get to help organizations run by people in their spare time grow.
It's also not great in a few respects:
- Not a ton of money in it (fine with us)
- Our support burden varies dramatically because our users are all over the map, literally and figuratively.
- Most of the volunteers who are our clients work on our stuff when they aren't at their day jobs.
This last item means that, from time to time, we'll have something come up at 7:00 PM (or later, since some of our customers are two or three time zones behind us) and it really does need to be dealt with right then. This is pretty rare due to how awesome we are, and even more rare that it takes more than a couple minutes to solve - but it does happen and no matter how good of a job we do during business hours, our customers have come to expect that we are at least paying attention while they are working with our stuff. It's actually a pretty small sacrifice and we don't spend our nights and weekends hooked to our smartphones: but we do have to glance at them to make a quick judgment call on whether whatever has caught on fire can wait until the morning.
This sort of government fiat idiocy is absolutely typical: the people who are most able to comply with it will be large businesses that have enough people and resources to just schedule people according to when they need coverage so that 'business hours' are not being violated. It is usually big business that can absorb the costs of rules like these. We have a handful of people who work for us and they have lives. They enjoy the freedom and flexibility of the job and they (like me) feel that having to be mildly attentive after hours for the once a month that you do have to put in a little extra work is a small price to pay.
None of which is to say that it's not possible to pressure your salaried employees to do things after hours that they don't want to do; but there is some responsibility on the employee side to be up front about what the commitment expected of them is. The best antidote to companies that do take advantage of their employees in this manner is competition: the knowledge that they could go to work for us (or anybody) who won't do that to them. Shame that rules like this mean there will be a lot fewer of us when they do go looking.
....and compensation.
A lot of people are told to "be available" or told they will be working extra hours, often on short notice, with no additional compensation or time off. Even worse is the unstated assumption that stuff sent after hours will get looked at or that you're paying attention to the non-stop barrage of emails.
Well, IBM did get sued over this several years ago for this very thing. Now all but the highest end tech employees are non-exempt.
I worked contract for decades. You are not exempt as a contractor, you contract for specific hours and declare specific charges for overtime. They may ask, but they can't make. It's a contract; you can always walk, you can always sue and they know it. If you worked free overtime, it was nobody's fault but yours.
It's not a law per se but a branch agreement between employers and labor unions in part of the IT industry. Even for a french speaker the wording sounds bizarre, as if the 2 parties had only managed to come to a wobbly, half-baked agreement.
:
:
Translated form the original agreement
"Effective respect by the employee of these minimal rest hours implies that they compulsorily disconnect from remote communication tools.
The employer will make sure that a tracking tool is set up to enforce employee daily and weekly off-work times.
They will also put into place any necessary means to ensure that the employee can disconnect from remote communication tools at their disposal.
It should be noted that, in this context, employees with annualized working days, in agreement with their employer, can freely manage the time necessary to accomplish their mission."
While it appears some unions wanted strict obligation to remain off-line between 10 PM to 7 AM (in French), it was finally agreed that it was not feasible due to multi-timezone bound jobs.
My interpretation is that the first sentence is here to allow employers to deny any responsibility if an employee was to work long hours from home on their own initiative and blame that on the company later.
All in all it's not such a big deal, just
We make sure you can disconnect
You disconnect
You don't sue us for pressurizing you if you don't
As a side note, this isn't unseen before in Europe - in 2011 Volkswagen had already established a daily "truce" in email communications, stopping their Blackberry servers after work hours.
The "boring, unseasoned, tasteless life"?
Zow, that's a weird translation.
On the other hand it is still a step up for some people. ;)
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I work for a European company in the US. Our work rules are very different because we're a multinational and HR is handled on a regional basis. Every single one of my colleagues complains about the French 35 hour week and their unwillingness to put in crazy hours like Americans do. I happen to agree with the French on this one, and this comes from a lot of experience working in several different work environments.
US workers love to point to the "lazy socialist French" and make fun of their long vacations and very relaxed work style. And at the same time, they don't realize that they live longer, have better family lives, and are generally better adjusted than most stressed out Americans. Unemployment is higher than it is here, but their society isn't structured around crushing anyone who doesn't have a job. As an example, look at how much people complained about continuing the meager unemployment benefits for long-term unemployed people in the US. People were complaining about giving someone who has no hope of getting another job ever a couple hundred dollars a week to survive on. Long term unemployed this time around aren't lazy -- this time, all the old school manufacturing jobs are being thrown out of the economy, leaving people with average or below average intelligence with no hope of anything beyond fast food employment. But that's another worry for another time.
Back to work hours and work/life balance -- I am incredibly lucky in that I have a job in IT with lots of flexibility. Lots of my peers don't. Employers are constantly trying to squeeze every last minute of work out of their existing resources rather than adding more. Mine is too, but less so...I've been trying to get us another head for quite some time now and it's very hard. I have no problem with having a healthy work ethic, and people do need to be motivated. I do have a problem when I see employers taking advantage of people who don't realize they're being taken advantage of. Especially in IT, I have witnessed a lot of "hero culture" employers who demand that employees be available 24/7 even when it's not really necessary. Millennials are especially susceptible to this because they're used to being tethered to social media all day long. I think this is one of the reasons companies prefer younger workers -- fewer non-work demands on their time and a willingness to work crazy hours simply because they haven't figured out that their employer won't extend them the same loyalty down the road. In my opinion, your average employee is deluding him or herself into thinking that their job is super-important, that everyone else is lazy, and that their employer values them immensely. Evidence shows that this is no longer the case. It may have been in the 50s/60s "job for life" era, but unfortunately that's gone for the most part.
I'm also a new parent, and if you don't have experience, it's very hard to explain the drain on your free time that this places on you if you're doing it right and paying attention to your family. I see stressed out parents working for employers who don't give a damn responding to work emails at 2 in the morning simply because their employer expects that of them. I'll _glance_ at my messages once or twice in the evening, but I don't feel pressure to jump in and fix something right away -- unless something's literally on fire, it can wait. My opinion is this -- if something is really critical enough to require 24/7 coverage, then staff it that way. If you aren't willing to do that, then it's not critical. If the US were to adopt a "no after hours contact" rule or 35-hour week, it would reduce unemployment simply because companies would have to hire more resources. Either that, or a whole lot of "priority 1 mission critical" stuff would suddenly become less so.
As long as it is sustainable.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
France fails at having an Internationally competitive workforce.
Sure, if you are a fan of the coporate greed that is "free trade". On the other hand, if your primary goal is the health of your society, your nation, your people and their quality of life, an "internationally competitive workforce" may not be the top concern on your list.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Sometimes it is hundred times easier to solve a problem by communicating urgently, even after work, than in the morning.
For example, a colleague from another city arrived at the airport and for some reason does not know the name of a hotel. She needs just one word from me.
Or something like this. Just one or two words, and a week of calm work afterwards.
Sometimes there's something critical going on and you need to be in touch after hours. That's reasonable. The big problem is that for most it's become the rule, not the exception.
I've never been told I need to check emails outside of work, however, in recent years I've felt an unspoken pressure to be responsive to emails after hours. Working late bothers me less than this because it feels like an intrusion into my personal life. My own time is for unwinding and taking care of personal obligations, not to keep fretting about work. And without fail, the thing that demanded immediate response was something that could have waited, if it weren't for an impulsive and impatient manager.
Sadly, we're in a world of instant gratification. If people don't get an immediate response they freak out. And it's the same old shit with corporate America; there's an incredible sense of urgency; until the responsibilities fall on them, then they can afford to take on a leisurely pace.
I enjoy working. I think it's fascistic to tell me I can't work when I want to.
So basically what this is saying is that it is not illegal for your boss to send you an email, it is not illegal for him to ask you to work from home after work hours, it is just illegal for you to agree, and you will be the one fined? At least that is how the summery reads.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
My terms and conditions of employment say 37.5 hours per week, plus reasonable hours outside 9 - 5.30pm if necessary (where 'reasonable' is defined between me and my line manager). So, I don't check work email outside 9 - 5.30pm, and only a few people at work know my mobile number (I don't have a work mobile, so that's not an issue). Simple as that.
When you're not at work, you're NOT AT WORK! My employer does not own my time. kthxbai
So how does that work for that position, exactly? The executive assistants I know have to carry their (company) cell phones with them everywhere, and they are effectively on call 24/7. This French law would definitely run counter to what is essentially a basic job function.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm sorry, I don't care if you're having a heart attack on the front lawn as your house burns. I'm off the clock.
There's something to be said for the productivity of going to your job, working hard and then relaxing once you are back at home. French law appears to step in where managers fail to think long term about their staff's productivity.
Have gnu, will travel.
My work phone is turned off once I leave the office and is turned back on when I return. When my turn is up to do on-call, I only read texts from our alerting system.
I love my job, but there are limits and boundaries.
Looking at your mod score of zero I'm feeling whatever the French call Schadenfreude.
If there's no money in fast food, where did such a quantity of restaurants come from? Why is so much spent on advertising and infrastructure? It's huge!
Many already have, they've become contractors. When you bill by the hour, most companies will not let you work more than 40 hours per week, and those that do, you get to bill for. It may not be time and a half, but it's payment for time.
You just need to take control over your own career to get out of the salary prison.
Wow, yall obviously can't take a joke!
I don't really think the french are lazy. No, just a bunch of sissies.
Well, come to think of it, yeah, lazy too.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
My work cell phone is provided by my employer. I have my own personal cell phone, which is 100% separate from my employer. I will not provide that cell number to my employer. Period. When I get home from work, I turn off the work cell phone. If they contact me during off-duty hours, I won't get the message until I am on duty. If my employer demands my personal cell number, then in return I demand that they reimburse my cell phone bill 100%. It is not an unreasonable demand and they never follow through. Why do we need a law for this?
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I used to think that about Australia. Until last week anyway when I found out my company is closing because we can't remain competitive. I felt sorry for myself at first but then I heard Philip Morris closed on the same day. Boring laid off 300 the day after.
You want a race to the bottom? How's rising unemployment and the wholesale destruction of the manufacturing sector sound?
I'm French, and I briefly worked for a Dutch firm. I was amazed at lunch in the break room: by the time I had finished my quick lunch (under an hour !) at least 3 Dutch colleagues had come and gone next to me.
Then again, they leave work much earlier than we do.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Worth it? I've always preferred a slightly larger company to avoid these problems...and have no interest in management.
They realize it all right, they just all think they're better than average. Thus efforts are focused on increasing wage gaps so the superior half can soar unweighed by the sheeplike masses, and when that fails to improve your lot, it's clearly because you're still supporting too much dead weight rather than because you're just an average person. There's nothing worse than mediocrity, after all.
Everything has its price, even pleasant delusions. Especially pleasant delusions, judging by history. And I suspect even the down payment hasn't yet been fully made.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I have read the original article in french from Les Echos. I understand this is not a law but an agreement between employers and labor unions for the IT sector.
Worth it for me.
YMMV.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
That looks like Italian to me.
I suppose they all smell of garlic and generally aren't fat so I can see why an American would confuse them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's not a law, it's an agreement between the managers' union and the enterprises' union. Only managers with a specific kind of contract (~250,000 people) are affected by this. I know that contract because it's the one I have had for 10 years. This contracts provides no maximum daily work hours, only a minimum about of rest hours : 11. Ergo, you can't work more than 13 hours a day, which I don't think anyone will claim is not a fucking lot.
With this contract, I have to work 218 days a year. This means that if there are many bank holidays on week days on any given year, I will have less PTO that year (since they're replaced by the bank holidays). These contracts are the exception not the rule, and they exist because people like me who pull very long hours would cost way to much if we were paid overtime. I regularly take planes on week ends, or come back late from a customer (meeting ending at 6pm in Germany, plane at 8pm in Munich, I'm home at midnight).
Last but not least, the agreement doesn't prohibits after-hour emails or calls, but make it so the employer cannot expect from us to pick up the phone after work hours. Since most of the time we're working anyway (I'm on the road or in an airport terminal) I will pick up the phone or do emails if only because I might be bored - but if I had a rough and long day and decide to read a book instead, the employer cannot call me out for doing this. It was already the case of my employer who understands my complicated schedule and the stress and fatigue that goes with it, but the fact that it's now a rule make it so that less understanding employers can't do that any more. This agreement is nicknamed "Anti-burnout" around here.
calls this absurd".
Dear Rupert F.* Murdoch,
I realize that you're an 0.01% Australian who bought citizenship in the US, so perhaps you might have one of your lawyers explain the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, that mentioned indentured servitude.
And then you can tell us how all of *your* employees get 10% over base salary while they're on-call, and what your *official* comp time policy is. Oh, and about the annual bonuses *all* of *them* get.
Alternatively, FOAD. I haven't answered any since I worked for a Baby Bell in the mid-nineties, and have no intention of ever doing so.
mark
* fscking
I work in the US for a French tech company before which I worked the long hours at three different Fortune 100 companies, so I've seen both sides of this issue. My French co-workers DO work many fewer weeks per year than I do. And they DO go out for long lunches and have a glass of wine with lunch. And they have a flex arrival time at work and going home (common in many US tech jobs too). A few of them have taken sabbaticals or mental health leave of absences - something mostly unheard of in the States. At the same time, when at work, they are very hard workers, very productive, always willing to help out a team-mate or to stay late for a meeting so our team does not have to come in early. And they make MUCH less money even before taxes, which are much higher. So they have much less disposable income. They live in smaller houses, drive older cars, etc. So, from what I've seen. Americans work more hours for more money. And both are at least a little jealous of the other.
Take pity on poor APK
Who, a-brim with frustration,
Projects onto others
His own hallucinations.
BURMA SHAVE
cat
Democracy is about popular opinions, not correct ones.
Socializing is about popular opinions and flattery, not reality.
Product sales are about trends, not technical best solutions.
Everywhere we humans go, it's quantity over quality. That's because of how we choose. We pick what lots of people want to believe is true, not what is true.
In defense of Slashdot, it's better here than most places, including off the net. About 5% of the posters here are insightful and will actually consider an opinion other than what their TV says, or friends in the local watering hole think is important.
If anything, it's the fanboys that make it difficult here. Apple, Ron Paul, Google, Obama, gays, Open Office, AR-15s, etc. They form little organized voting blocs who try to destroy any opinion that isn't fawning like their own on their topic of choice.
Futurist Traditionalism