This article is both wrong on many points and awfully biased. >Will this law help maintain work-life balance or is it an assault on freedom? ...The actual ass

This article is both wrong on many points and awfully biased. >Will this law help maintain work-life balance or is it an assault on freedom? ...The actual assault on freedom is employers sending mails after work hours and expecting you to read them on your free time, considering the uneven relationship between employer and employee. If anything, it levels the playing field. It then goes on as if a definition of working hours was enshrined in the law, and how it can prevent flexible working hours. No. If your working hours are 3AM to 12AM, then mails are okay at this time. If you have spotty days with an hour here and an hour there, those will be your working hours If you're a "cadre", then your working hours are basically anything that is not your rest time (a consecutive 11 hours after you left work). And, like said, there are no penalties defined. Do you know why? Because a) companies were already being condemned for sanctioning their employees for not checking mails outside of working hours and b) It doesn't forbid the employees to check their mail after work, it allows them not to. You want to check those messages at 3AM ? Is it of your own volition? Are you not being pressured by your employer because <x> is needed quickly? Sure, go ahead, you're free to do it. Even if you are being pressured, you are free to do it. However, if you sue, your employer will be found guilty of breaking this law. >For them to switch off at a particular time of the day may not be practically feasible. No defined hours in the law aside from your own. >what about the ambitious workers among us who seek to climb the corporate ladder as quickly as possible? A) You're a bit of an idiot if you think this will ever be good for you B) Good thing, you're still free to do it. >For them, perhaps, overtime hours could be an opportunity to learn faster. Overtime hours means that you're still working. And being paid to. Why would you not be able to check those _work_ mails when you're _working_ ? >But despite these examples, most remain skeptical of such a law being passed in other countries, especially the U.S., where long workweeks and foregone vacation time are the norm On the other hand, american working hours have been a running gag for every european country so... Maybe eventually the problem does not lay in Europe. Ultimately, the text of this "law" is a mere few lines (https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexteArticle.do;jsessionid=B586440ACBE8F266F012720C43421185.tpdila08v_1?idArticle=JORFARTI000032984268&cidTexte=JORFTEXT000032983213&dateTexte=29990101&categorieLien=id https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexteArticle.do;jsessio...), and is only part of a massive change. There's much more in the full text that destroys things that people fought and died for.