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Work Emails After Hours Finally Banned in France (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:
A new French law establishing workers' "right to disconnect" goes into effect today. The law requires companies with more than 50 employees to establish hours when staff should not send or answer emails. The goals of the law include making sure employees are fairly paid for work, and preventing burnout by protecting private time. French legislator Benoit Hamon, speaking to the BBC, described the law as an answer to the travails of employees who "leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash -- like a dog."
The BBC reports that France already has a 35-hour work week, while Fortune adds that many European companies have already taken steps to curtail after-work emails. "In 2012, Volkswagen blocked all emails to employees' Blackberries after-hours," and "Daimler took the step of deleting all emails received by employees while on vacation."
The BBC reports that France already has a 35-hour work week, while Fortune adds that many European companies have already taken steps to curtail after-work emails. "In 2012, Volkswagen blocked all emails to employees' Blackberries after-hours," and "Daimler took the step of deleting all emails received by employees while on vacation."
It starts with vacation emails, next they'll be deleting first posts. Who would want to live in a world like that?
If I can't get a hold of someone outside their M-F work hours, then I'll find someone else.
along with that 35 hour work week - without a pay reduction.
I'm hourly and required to carry a work cellphone 24/7 despite not being paid to do so in any way (money/comp time/whatever).
But the demonization of unions by big corporate money has been very successful in fucking shit like this up for the US.
"What?.....but..what?...how can this be? If they don't answer emails at 1am then the Boss will be angry and they will have demonstrated they hold no love for their Company and are not filled full of Corporate zeal! They'll be downsized ! They'll lose everything ! If they get sick their entire immediate family will be bankrupted! Please, please, pray to Dear Corporate Leader that this doesn't happen in God's Own USA !"
*heads asplode*
France already has very strong labor-protection laws. Nobody could be sanctioned because they didn't answer e-mail's while off the clock. This law is illogical, why stop people that want to work off-hours? Personally I often find it more satisfying to do some off-the-clock work then watch TV when I'm bored
Why do you insist on linking to older versions of your own stories which provide no new information or no -redundant context?
So this law takes effect, and employers are now required to set hours "when staff should not send or answer emails". Is there anything preventing the employers from declaring those hours to be 1:00am - 6:00am?
#DeleteChrome
Fortunately it doesn't affect most of us - French laws only apply in Louisiana (along with France and Canada of course) so the rest of us can just ignore it.
... and next day, like every day, they'll sing their company anthem, as depicted in https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Americans really have no idea how hard they let their work fuck them in the ass. I work for a multinational corporation and last year when they rolled out the new time tracking system they had a conference call on its features. That's when the Americans all found out their German colleagues were required to work only a 7.5 hour day instead of 8. The system, designed by the Germans and presented to us by them, also had a cap of 10 hours a day you could enter. The first question from the Americans was what to do when you work more than 10. There was a long awkward pause while the German presenters tried to grasp the question and eventually suggested that you enter any hours past 10 on the weekend.
In meetings with the Germans they can't understand why no American ever takes more than two weeks of vacation in a row while they routinely take the entire month of August off. They have less hours, have better pay, vastly superior vacation time, vastly superior benefits, and they have job security unlike our right to work for less/fire at will states...but look Americans! There's some dude on food stamps buying a potato with MUNNY DA GUBMINT STOLE FRUM U!
France:PSA::US:GM::Japan:Toyota. QED.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm hourly and required to carry a work cellphone 24/7 despite not being paid to do so in any way
Can you really not find other work? That seems unlikely for a technical worker these days. To put up with 24/7 duty with no extra pay is not something you should put up with. You should demand extra compensation, or leave.
Sorely needed in the US...along with that 35 hour work week
I disagree. When I was younger I worked 50-80 hour (or longer) weeks. But the thing is, I enjoyed it, a lot. More than that it set up a great base for a career to follow, because I had essentially got an extra year or two of experience over people who worked "regular" hours, indeed probably 2x the experience over people who worked 35 hour weeks...
It's not like i never take time for vacation, then or now (sometimes a lot). But I don't think there is any value mandating a cap on possible work, I feel like that is the best way to ruin and country and economy and frankly, a whole generation of people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's a bit unfair. The supermarkets might close for lunch but at least they are open in the evenings. Same with the shopping malls which like the rest of Europe will be open late nights all evenings.
But in the good old UK all shopping malks close at between 5pm and 6pm, with only one or two late night evenings.
Entirely voluntary compliance by companies.
No way to enforce it.
No penalties involved for violations.
That's pretty much what this amounts to.
There are, in fact, many people [like me] that enjoy working. My hobby is to casually log in and do some work. You're trying to outlaw my hobby...so, ummm, fuck you?
Work has never been popular in France.
Slave work has never been popular in France.
How does this work? I work 7-4 with an hour lunch, and I have teammates who work 8-5 and even 9-5:30 (e.g.)
Can we send e-mails 7-5:30, or 9-4? What about first/second/third shift? Can they not communicate with each except by tacking post-it notes to bulletin boards?
This is Europe, right? You can't "just fire" somebody anyway. Wouldn't it be easier to make the law prohibit firing or other adverse action for the same reasons?
Why prohibit it? Any guy can send mail after my shift, and I can read it the next morning before the other guy gets in.
Will France have to wait until Monday morning to surrender?
As someone with a sleep disorder who works far better at 3am than 9am, I really hate laws like these. While well intentioned, they make my life far more difficult.
This is a good anecdote that shows not only that a company can and will take advantage of you, but also just how much power an employee really has even if it doesn't seem like they have much. The thing is that it takes a long time to find a good employee to hire in, longer still to train them as a replacement for most work... if you are being told to do something you do not think as fair, don't do it or demand compensation. Most middle managers will fold.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's some dude on food stamps buying a potato with MUNNY DA GUBMINT STOLE FRUM U!
They terk our jerbs to buy that potatoe!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well they are going to run into problems down the road that will force the world to take a hard look at the messed up economic system that forces people to create financial obligations they won't be able to live up to in order to get the situation they want, but unless they want to do that looking now, who cares about the non-live-up-to-able obligations?
Fortunately it doesn't affect most of us - French laws only apply in Louisiana (along with France and Canada of course) so the rest of us can just ignore it.
Canada is not a French colony. Do not let the politicians in Ottawa with their fetish for Quebec fool you. The bilingual policy of the federal and many provincial governments costs taxpayers dearly for little to no gain. Prime Minister Chretien had an opportunity when the separatists almost destroyed the country; he should have ordered the military to crush the separatist movement and its supporters, something that should have happened during the 1970s FLQ uprising and murders by separatists in Quebec.
In meetings with the Germans they can't understand why no American ever takes more than two weeks of vacation in a row while they routinely take the entire month of August off.
For over two years I couldn't take more than one week of vacation at a time because we were short handed and I was managing the servers completely on my own. Besides getting short vacations, I was on call 24/7 by myself. Finally I told management I was taking a two week vacation and that I was taking it whether they authorized it or not. I still have way too much vacation time saved up and need to use it up, but I'm no longer letting them interfere with my off time that I have damn well earned. /posting anonymously for just this instance
Giving someone a cell phone and expecting them to be staring at it 24/7 causes personal life to become Interruptable, and with shrinking staff and increasing expectations. its either burn out or fail. There needs to be some balance, some renumeration for salaried folks. There is something sour about being on a conference call from 8 AM Saturday to 1 PM and as the ONLY full time employee on the call, you are indeed the only one not being paid for losing a day off. The Fail is that the enthusiasm wanes and you get numb and drop in so many ways. Does any one else find this to be true?
Its a pendulum. The reasons for unions become apparent when they decline... It's time for our (yes. US lad here) for our new president to tell us how he'll protect our jobs, in the arena of a global workforce. I can't see our whole culture farming out all the IT workers to offshore ... its like having someone manage your wallet. Time for the Suspendered ones to realize that IT workers can add value and not just cost, if the process is working as it should. Surround yourselves with people that know how to make IT work, work around those that don't.
please note that :
- the law says 35h/week, but it is not enforced everywhere, far from that. Almost all companies have a negotiated agreement. The law say that if you work 35h/w, you get nothing, and if you work 39h/w, you get about 22 days of additional free time. The agreement usually says you get 10 to 15 days, period.
So I can work 35h/w and get 15 days ? Yes, may be. But most people work 39h/w, and often more.
So, who is the winner ? The company of course. The law and its application are different.
- there are many countries which have work hours less than the French 35h/week. what not talking about these ones ?
- what about productivity ? Many studies show that French are much more productive than many other countries.
Cliché ?
Alright, my turn : stop bashing France, you Americans who will kill themselves working like crazy 50, 60, 70h/w or more. Your productivity is less than French.
Totof
"socialist shithole" ? Seriously ?
Did you had a look at what happened the last 5 years ?
The socialist president and governments have done more for companies, and less for people than the previous, right wing one. Socialist does not mean anything anymore. It's just a label politics chose when they get out of the ENA (National School for Administration : it's where most politics come from, they never had a real job).
Once in charge, they only do things to please their friends and sponsors
Totof
Try living there for a couple of years and get back to us.
I know people who have. All of that comes with a price. "If you see something, say something" isn't just a motto, it's a way of life.
There's some dude on food stamps buying a potato with MUNNY DA GUBMINT STOLE FRUM U!
They terk our jerbs to buy that potatoe!
They didn't even learn to spell correctly.
I work for a European multi-national. Some of my colleagues (sometimes the French ones too) are on all the time, and some colleagues are on-call during working hours only, and who take a month off every year (even some Americans!), during which time they are not available for anything. 1) I see no correlation between competence/getting things done and being on all the time. 2) Those who are on all the time tend to to be much more personally invested in work outcomes, so they are the ones who blow up every time some little thing doesn't go exactly their way. Overall, this makes these colleagues more difficult to accomplish things with, and I prefer the ones who have lives outside the company. This is basic time management. Of course, being asked (and paid) to be on call in case of an emergency is a different matter: I'm talking about normal work projects.
You can probably ban all forms of technological communication between employer and employee after work, but can you prohibit absolutely all forms of contact outside of work hours if the purpose happens to be work-related?
Generally speaking, it is not illegal to require employees that are not telecommuting to live in a certain geographical area, so it may often be entirely possible for an employer to bypass this prohibition on emails by just physically showing up at the employee's door and talking to him in person.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
France:PSA::US:GM::Japan:Toyota. QED.
It's more like:
France: renault-nissan-mitsubishi.
The conglomerate has sold 9.55 millions vehicules in 2015 and that make them the second biggest automobile maker just behind Toyota (with 10.1M vehicules). It is expected that in 2017, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance will be the number one automobile maker.
FTFY
This shouldn't have to be forced on people in a law! It should be common sense for all employers!
As someone that had lived and worked in Germany for the last 6 years. My experience is solely in the software development sector.
You are almost completely on the ball. The German system reflects the concept that a happy healthy employee is a productive employee.
The job security swings both ways too. You can't just be fired and thrown out with no pay. However, you can't just leave either. You need to give a good (usually over a month) time to bring someone else up to speed with what you were doing.
About vacations though... I have never met anyone that takes an entire month of vacation. The most we take is two weeks. Though, that is probably because you want to leave vacation days to deal with appointments and family illnesses. Health insurance will cover you looking after your children if they are ill, but not your partner, as an example.
Android Software Engineer
It's just an alliance, not a single company. Renault owns a minority of Nissan and while Nissan has a large minority stake in Mitsubishi Motors, Renault does not own any shares in it outright. Moreover, in 2016, Volkswagen sold more cars than either Toyota or Renault-Nissan and although Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi will likely get closer to Toyota in 2017, I do not expect the ranking order will change, unless the alliance absorbs another car maker.
Like French people, you said "renumeration" instead of "remuneration". Ouch!
I thought it was Renault-Nissan-Samsung.
So it whats best for the few?
Or your'e an employer?
I'm OK with this, which is probably going to get me labeled a lazy French socialist. (I'm in the US.) But, I've worked jobs where I've had to be available 24/7 on an on-call rotation basis. Weeks where I've had to do this sucked badly. It was earlier in my career pre-kids, but the feeling is exactly like having a newborn at home in terms of the sleep quality you get. You're never fully asleep after being woken up at 3 AM for yet another false alarm (or real emergency!) And, I was lucky it was rotation work -- lots of companies have cut so much staff that they just make everyone on-call for the applications they support these days.
I think that a lot of people, especially young ones in their first jobs, don't realize how much they're being taken advantage of by employers. The other people against this are hard-driving "tech entrepreneurs" who have the crazy Type-A personalities anyway and would work 30 hours a day if it was possible. If you're just out of college and don't have a family, significant other, or even a time consuming hobby, you might not realize that it's healthy to turn off work when it's time to go home, and spend the remainder of the day focusing on your own pursuits. Same thing with the entrepreneurs, they live to work and have no idea why anyone would want to be doing anything other than responding to 3 AM emails. The reality is that the vast majority of people are not driven to work 18 hour days -- they want more out of life.
Does this make me lazy? I doubt it -- I work like crazy to fit my tasks into a standard workday, and count myself lucky that I'm not in support anymore responding to pager calls at night. I do have a self-imposed flexible schedule -- my wife has a long commute so I sometimes do a lot of family things during the day. So, I will occasionally send out a 2 AM email, but it's my choice because I left work 3 hours early that day. What i don't get is people who call this move by the French "lazy" -- do they really want to be chained to work 24 hours a day? Do they not have lives outside of work?
And that's why any work we do with Germans, particularly Airbus, is over budget, takes fucking forever to complete, and is typically substandard in quality upon delivery. Unfortunately, the Germans are probably superior to most other European nations, as far as work ethic is concerned. Don't even get me started on the Italians..
If you're working for a pay check, sure go ahead and complain about your hours and benefits. Those that are working to accomplish something will continue to have ultimate job security and better pay.
Gross Domestic Happiness - let's Evolve....
Get up!
"Ring ring... Hello? I need you to come back to work and bail out a tech that fucked up. OK..." Got there, fixed the problem, asked about getting paid. "We're not paying you, you fixed the problem in only 10 minutes." Fuck that... My phone does not get answered until after business hours now. That 10 minute fix interfered with hours of personal family time.
How about just not checking your work emails when you're not at work? Why should the company hold them for you until your working day starts? That's what your work mailbox is for. Just don't query it in your free time.
At the company I work for, the European office has customers that are willing to pay 3 times the prices the US office is able to get from its customers. The European engineering staff is twice the size of ours in the US. Corporate manage seems happy to let the European office have that many engineers, but expects us in the US to handle twice the total workload as the European office.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
In meetings with the Germans they can't understand why no American ever takes more than two weeks of vacation in a row while they routinely take the entire month of August off.
I also work for a multinational corporation.
In the US office, the middle and higher level managers routinely take all of August off. It's the rest of us that have trouble trouble taking even 2 weeks off, Not because management won't approve 2 or more weeks, but because after even a week off, the pile of problems we come back to is very oppressive. After 2 weeks, it's almost not worth having taken the time off.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
Renault-Samsung is the Korean branch of Renault, which they originally bought from Samsung during the Korean financial crisis. They produce cars derived from Renault and Nissan designs.
And Germany's manufacturing sector and overall economy is very strong. Yep, screwing citizens really is a formula for failure and protecting citizens really is a formula for success.