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Thousands of French protest longer working hours



PARIS, Feb 5 (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac's conservative government faced a major challenge to its economic policies on Saturday as tens of thousands of public and private sector workers protested over labour laws, pensions and schools.

With more than 50,000 taking to the streets in provincial cities, organisers said they hoped for a national turnout of at least 300,000 nationwide to ram home their message.

"The government would do well not only to hear but to listen to the workers," said the secretary-general of the CGT union, Bernard Thibault, at the start of the rally in Paris.

The protests come as parliament debates a government plan to allow staff in the private sector to increase overtime and work up to 48 hours a week, the maximum allowed under EU law. But managers must first agree the changes with unions.


Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin says rules must be relaxed to help cut stubbornly high unemployment, currently close to 10 percent, and make the world's fifth largest economy more competitive.


Four of France's five major unions called Saturday's protests against reforms they say would sound the death knell of the 35-hour week and result in longer hours without extra pay.


"Chirac, Raffarin, are you sleeping? Your workers are in the street," chanted demonstrators in Toulouse in southwest France.


The 35-hour week was introduced in 1998 by the previous Socialist administration in an effort to reduce joblessness. The party has called on Raffarin to abandon his reform and re-open negotiations with the unions.


"This reform will have very unfortunate consequences on the labour market as, at a time when we have three million unemployed, overtime will be increased which will deprive even more people of jobs," said Socialist party leader Francois Hollande at a demonstration in the western city of Rennes.


GOVERNMENT WARY


Buoyed by the success of Jan. 20 rallies that drew support from 210,000 state workers -- the public sector employs about a quarter of the French workforce -- unions say their campaign is gaining momentum.


Raffarin is wary of large public protests after voters punished his government for unpopular economic cutbacks in regional and European Parliament elections last year.


He has played down any parallels with street protests that are widely seen as causing the downfall of the last conservative government in 1997.


Although no elections are due before 2007, the cash-strapped government is concerned French voters could express their anger over reforms when they vote in a referendum on the European Union constitution before the summer.


Both Raffarin and Chirac have urged voters to approve the treaty on its merits and not allow themselves to be sidetracked by domestic political issues.


A recent poll showed some 77 percent of workers surveyed wanted to keep their working week at the current level. Only 18 percent wanted to work longer hours.


(Additional reporting by Nicolas Fichot in Toulouse, Pierre-Henri Allain in Rennes)





© Copyright Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of Reuters Ltd.


02/05/2005 10:52
RTR



Full Story

[Nico]

Ok I'll dip my toe into the water. :)

I think the logic behind keeping a short working week is technically sound, especially when unemployment is high. The benifits are;

# More personnel employed, easing the welfare systems load.
# Less stress related illness and fatigue related car crashes/ industrial accidents etc... Easing the load on the health system
# More time for parents to spend with children, helping with family unity etc..


Down side, less opportunity to maximise wage/ salary.

[Buxford]

Lol, 40 hour work weeks? And you people wonder why the US is the most powerful/succesful nation in the world. My dad, on average, works 45-50 hours a week. Lol, you're all lazy......

[Nico]

Buxford wrote: Lol, 40 hour work weeks? And you people wonder why the US is the most powerful/succesful nation in the world. My dad, on average, works 45-50 hours a week. Lol, you're all lazy......

Once to keep a contract together, I worked 200 hours in two weeks. Then I spent a month recovering. There's no medal for turning yourself into a hospital statistic, or grabbing your chest at under 50. So the question is, does the 35 hour working week make sense, not whether it is a chance to say that you can work more hours than that. [Sorry Bux, I'm on the pulpit here :wink: ]

[profevilj]

Buxford wrote: Lol, 40 hour work weeks? And you people wonder why the US is the most powerful/succesful nation in the world. My dad, on average, works 45-50 hours a week. Lol, you're all lazy......

The other agruement is that a 30-35 hour work week maximizes productivity. If you work 60 hours a week, fatigue becomes a factor in productivity. Also, for the record, almost everyone on america works a 45 hour work week now. However, there is lunch and mandatory "breaks" now factored in.

[Hexagone]

Buxford wrote: Lol, 40 hour work weeks? And you people wonder why the US is the most powerful/succesful nation in the world. My dad, on average, works 45-50 hours a week. Lol, you're all lazy......
Well that's the main difference between US and us :wink:, we work to live and not the contrary (well that's kind of basic, but you know what I mean)
It's not about being lazy, it's about having a life.
You have no idea on how hard workers French can be outside of...work :wink:
I don't consider that working on a longer period of time each day is making you better than the others. I have seen people spending hours behind a desk and doing nothing but pretend to work or spending in fact half of the time really working. Talk about real productivity.
Most French may not worship work as much as Americans but they are still good hard workers. They want to have a good job that will satisfy them but most of them have other priorities in life than spending their time doing nothing else than "making money".
We like money, we like to spend it too but we want to have time for that :)
On the other way, a lot of french are more on the 50 - 60 h/week of work, especially big bosses and selfmade companies owners.
Don't be fooled by the "all France works on 35h hours" scheme. That's wrong.
Anyway, the 35 hours thing needs to be re-adjust, for it is too rigid to be adapted to each kind of activities. In big corporations it works fine, for there are always someone to be here when another is taking a day or an hour...
But when you are a 3 employees enterprise, that's more difficult...

On a side not, I have worked with americans, and honestly they don't work any harder than europeans, they just work differently.
They don't understand that spending a hour for lunch is good for your mental (and physical) health and try to convice you that eating some junk food over you keyboard is better and make you more efficient. Well for sure it makes you fatter :twisted: :lol: :wink:

Sorry, I was a little tongue in cheek...I think it's all a question of culture and mentality :)

[Angela]

I agree with Hex. Anyway 50 or 60 hours a week are pretty common in Europe especially if you're a white collar.
The problem with 35 hours is that it was supposed to create new jobs but it didn't happened, people worked the same number of hours they did before simply the 5 additional hours were counted (and paid) as over hours.

[Hexagone]

Angela wrote: I agree with Hex. Anyway 50 or 60 hours a week are pretty common in Europe especially if you're a white collar.
The problem with 35 hours is that it was supposed to create new jobs but it didn't happened, people worked the same number of hours they did before simply the 5 additional hours were counted (and paid) as over hours.
Honestly, no one really believed it would actually create new jobs except some politics that are most of the time quite far away from reality :wink: .
On the other side, it has given to a lot of people the opportunity to bring some more flexibility into their work.

[Easybeat]

I've just finished a job where the management expected you to:-
a) Work extra hours without pay.
b) Put yourself under stress as you are more productive (The MD actually said this to me)
c) Put work first and everything else second.
d) Expect low pay rises for the good of the company

The average yearly profit at this company was about 4-5%

After the MD told me about increasing my stress levels I left within 6 weeks and have moved to a new job which pays more, has less hours, overtime is frowned upon except in emergencies, my stress levels have dropped through the floor and to cap it all they make an average profit of about 7-8%. So who's attitude is right?

Personally having spent a good deal of time in France and the US I would say the French have a much better way of life while the Americans have a much better standard of living. Take your pick on which one you want.

[The_Right_Honourable]

The economic advantages of treating your work force like slave labour is clear to see in America's amazing and continued growth however i doubt that in any other nation on the earth there is such a wide gulf between rich and poor. Its bad here in the UK but i remember something about 10% of americans being on the breadline (seems bizzarely high, maybe its 1%; anyway its alot) while you have people like bill gates who's wealth exceeds many nations.

Enterprise is great, people should be able to acheive but social justice is about morality. Our societies are based on christian ideals, i do not believe in god, jesus and all that but why not take care of our fellow man? We are not islands, what we do affects in some way the whole world.

Eh.... i went on a ramble.... oh well?!

[Praetorian]

Quote: They don't understand that spending a hour for lunch is good for your mental (and physical) health and try to convice you that eating some junk food over you keyboard is better and make you more efficient. Well for sure it makes you fatter
Uhm, actually they get 1 hour lunch breaks, and it is rarely junk food. both my parents get an hour, and I used to get an hour at Petsmart. I get 30 min. at Wendy's, but I guess that is because the food is easy to come by.

[Buxford]

My dad works 45-50 hours a week, and he's stressed, but it doesn't ruin his life, lol.

My point is that the French, generally, are lazy.

They complain about 30 hour work weeks for Gods sake!

No wonder their country isn't the most productive...

[Easybeat]

Buxford wrote: My dad works 45-50 hours a week, and he's stressed, but it doesn't ruin his life, lol.

My point is that the French, generally, are lazy.

They complain about 30 hour work weeks for Gods sake!

No wonder their country isn't the most productive...

And my point is that maybe they've got it right and the US has got it wrong, what's the point of having ton's of cash if you haven't got time to spend it and you die before you retire?

BTW don't confuse laziness with not giving a toss, the French just do to place as much importance on materialism as Americans do.

[Praetorian]

What's wrong with getting stuff? I wish I had money...All I want is a book...a simple book. But NO! It is out of print so a used copy cost 80$!

[/rant]

[Nico]

Buxford wrote: My dad works 45-50 hours a week, and he's stressed, but it doesn't ruin his life, lol.

My point is that the French, generally, are lazy.

They complain about 30 hour work weeks for Gods sake!

No wonder their country isn't the most productive...

Dude, I've been there, they aren't lazy. What else can one say? Life there is just different. And there is no shortage of people who work harder than most of us ever do. The debate is far too simplistic.

[Nico]

Praetorian wrote: What's wrong with getting stuff? I wish I had money...All I want is a book...a simple book. But NO! It is out of print so a used copy cost 80$!

[/rant]

and you shall have your book * waves wand* [cue cheap CGI effects]

[Praetorian]

Yesss....


:lol:
That is alright. I have figured out a way to get my book for the mere price of 15$, but I don't want to mention my secret online.

[Nico]

Praetorian wrote: Yesss....


:lol:
That is alright. I have figured out a way to get my book for the mere price of 15$, but I don't want to mention my secret online.

It was the wand that did it. I got your back :-D

[Praetorian]

Anaximander wrote: Praetorian wrote: Yesss....


:lol:
That is alright. I have figured out a way to get my book for the mere price of 15$, but I don't want to mention my secret online.

It was the wand that did it. I got your back :-D

:wink:

I know it.