Well, mes petites pommes de terre, the dream is over. France has jettisoned its 35 hour work week, at least for the white collared types, which they call cadres. I always enjoyed being called cadre when I was working there. Made me feel cool. Anyways, Sarkozy's government has reset the rules so that now businesses can negotiate working time directly with unions and employees from the European Union legal maximum of 282 working days a year. The mathematically astute among you may notice that 282 is rather more than 365 - 104, those 104 days representing the 52 x 2 of the year's Saturdays and Sundays. You see, the European Union maximum is calculated on the idea that you get every Sunday off (so much for the secular society) plus five weeks of holiday, plus May 1, or 365 - (52 + 30+1) = 282.
What relationship do the number of working days have with the 35 hour work week, you may ask? Well, as many of you have no doubt been told by francophobe loonies who don't want to admit that those assholes can do anything right (id est, every US and British news outlet), few white-collared types worth paying white collar wages to can get his or her full workload polished off in a mere 7 hours a day. The law in its old form addressed this by giving about 3 weeks of holiday for cadres on top of the normal five weeks (which, by the way, was calculated on the assumption that both Saturdays and Sundays are not working days), meaning cadres effectively got 8 weeks of vacation a year. Or it was addressed by a 4-day work week for some people, especially lady cadres, which was useful considering most French schools still pursue the stupidity of closing Wednesdays, on the ridiculous, fossilized presumption mothers can afford to stay home and take care of the kids.
So. The idea at the moment is that the 35 hour work week continues to be the 'norm', but that employers can 'negotiate' with individual employees how much more they'll work than that, as compensated overtime instead of as days off beyond the legal minimum of 30 days, Sundays, and May 1. And to rub salt in the wound, a further feature of the legislation passed this week is that now employees only get a 10% bonus instead of a 25% bonus for overtime, more than cancelling out the tax breaks that were introduced in France for overtime pay a couple of months ago.
Some people think that little will change in practice because white-collar types are so in demand and no one will want to lose them; I'd remind those people that the 35 hour work week was introduced 10 years ago because there were so few white-collar jobs around, and it was thought the short week would force employers to hire more people. Hmm. I don't think it will be pretty, and I know it will be double plus unpretty for young people just starting out in the workforce, for whom things are already damn ugly in France. And I know it's just cut the already-dwindling chance of me ever moving back there by about half.
But my favourite parts of the story are elsewhere.
First, in the fact that this first major labour reform that snide little cunt Sarkozy managed has targetted the very people who voted him into power - middle class people in the private sector. The douchebag has thus far had relatively little impact on the truly bloated class that the middle class people in the private sector voted him in to deal with - that is, the public sector. Let this be a lesson to you, French yuppies; someone being from Neuilly does not mean he's on your side.
Second, and the winner, is the fact that a motion this controversial, with this much of an impact on so many people's quality of life, went through without much of a struggle in terms of the massive strikes, demonstrations, et cetera that the French workforce is usually so good at, because Sarkozy, that cunning trolly bastard, timed the vote for the end of July. When everybody concerned was on holiday.
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