7 ms·

35h work week fading as the average full-time work week in France nears 40h

65 points by waxzce 13y ago

jib 13y ago
What kind of weird thinking is that? "(ie outside of vacations, holidays and RTT days)." RTT days are specifically extra days off to get you down to 35hours/week. Hours/year would be a useful metric - hours / week, but filtering out weeks you have your time off isn't, unless you are somehow trying to argue that French working hours aren't sweet. I worked in a few different positions in France, I saw different contracts like 35h week, no RTT, 38h week,12RTT, 40h week, 24RTT. Arguing that the working week is longer for the guys who were working 40h/week, but had 49 days / year off (25 days of vacation + 24 RTTs) seems like using a metric intended to push an agenda. Someone on that schedule could literally take 1 day off every day of the week, should they so wish (if you include the bank holidays, which would amount to another 10 days or so / year, depending on how they fall).
nolok 13y ago
I don't know about industrial jobs, but everyone I know in IT, in marketing, ... Never really worked 35h, instead my contract says 39h (35h + 4h overtime) - for reference the worktime before 35h was 40h. And people who work even longer hours, have more overtime hours. What the law changed is not how long you can work, but where the overtime hours threshold is. This article, which claims the 35h worktime is fading, obviously doesn't know what it talks about, it has never been the norm in the "real world", outside of some specific areas such as public jobs. Which probably why they don't have any graph to show the actual worked hours change over the years, as that would go against what they claim.
lrem 13y ago
From my observation the work time is getting longer mainly because of influx of people desperate enough to do unpaid overtime. My wife's management is doing 7hrs/day. She's feeling quite insecure, so she's doing 9hrs/day, still being paid for the 7.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Companies will take advantage of EVERY available way available to them to have employess work more for less pay. If modern Western companies were allowed to use slavery or child labour, they would jump at the chance. It's a "competitive advantage", after all. That's what they do when they outsource to the third world anyway, take advantage of people in need to exploit them more than what a "westerner" would tolerate -- including children, and, in some cases, including beating them or even killing them if they attempt to demand better conditions (see Coca Cola in Latin America, Shell in Nigeria, etc). Just as they did in the West during the 19th century, early 20th century etc -- it's not that they changed their mind, it's just that labour laws now prevent them.
  - lrem 13y ago
    I would not say it is that bad. I'm not even aware of any explicit pressure from the management on doing the overtime. This would probably be illegal anyways. It's just the fear of failure (in a country that will probably fail soon). I hear the word "crisis" way too often, even though it still seems to be a seller's market for techies. Companies all around me are expanding like crazy, while the (especially junior) workers seem to really fear unemployment.
    - king_jester 13y ago
      > I would not say it is that bad. I'm not even aware of any explicit pressure from the management on doing the overtime. This would probably be illegal anyways. Here in the US, I've known many people who do not work in the tech industry that have experienced this kind of management pressure. Management doesn't explicitly state you will lose your job for not working more, but threats or implied loss of status, salary, or having your work transferred to someone else makes you very paranoid about losing your job. For some kinds of industries and services, this is a big deal because hiring is not nearly as fast or plentiful as it is in tech right n ow.
      - lrem 13y ago
        Well, you know... Back in the day, my father was explicitly told to accept unpaid overtime AND a hefty salary cut, or it's not a problem to find someone to replace him. Which he accepted. And got fired after a year anyways, to be replaced with a friend of the new owner. Now he's a quite successful entrepreneur :)
shin_lao 13y ago
I'm sorry but we have too many vacations and it's hurting business. Very often we can't reach a person because he's off and the proxy has no clue. This is very true at big corp. We wasted a lot of time that way. Employees may have trouble to take all their vacations (around 32 days a year + holidays) and this increases costs greatly, because sorry, but it's always more efficient to keep the head count as low as possible. Last but not least, this affected salaries negatively. What we were forced to give as vacations we didn't give as salary (although we try to be as generous as possible). edit: It seems unclear when I talk about "we can't reach a person" that I'm talking about our customers/vendors who have people sometimes away for a whole month (generally May).
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  Your business is being hurt because it is mismanaged, not because there are people taking too many vacations.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I'm sorry but we have too many vacations and it's hurting business. Very often we can't reach a person because he's off and the proxy has no clue. This is very true at big corp. We wasted a lot of time that way. If you have that problem, then your management and the way the company is run is BS. It's not about persons not being there a mere few hours less per week.
  - shin_lao 13y ago
    You should re-read my comment. I'm talking about our customers who have this problem, resulting in us having the problem because we can't get the right person. The problem is not being there few hours less per week but being in vacations a lot. For example the whole month of May is a pure write off every year. Your theory about my management being disorganized is very naive. Have you ever run a company? However well organized you might be at some point you have to interface with the outside world which is pure chaos.
    - king_jester 13y ago
fab13n 13y ago
This law allowed very positive changes, even if they aren't the officially intended ones. In exchange for a 10% work time reduction, largely compensated by years of near-zero salary rises, it lead unions to accept a lot of flexibility improvements, which are usually impossible to get through in France. (there's as much flexibility as anywhere else in France, but very poorly distributed: indeterminate work contracts are ridiculously stable, and everyone else is exceedingly precarious) As for the 35h week, most professionals such as engineers never wanted it nor got it. Instead, we keep contracts in fixed number of days per year, rather than hours per week, and we get an extra 10 days or so of paid vacations called "RTT". Extra vacations are more affordable in France than in many other countries: being a very touristic place, French people spend a lot of their vacation time in France, hence a lot of their vacation money back into French economy.
- fab13n 13y ago
  > being in a very touristic place, French people spend a lot of their vacation time in France. Also, many companies mandate that RTT days are taken regularly (to avoid having the company effectively closed for the whole summer, as well as half of december), which means no more than one or two days at once. This means many short vacations rather than few long ones, also improving the incentive to spend locally.
- joonix 13y ago
  Right, we should calculate average hours per week by total hours worked per year divided by number of weeks one was paid. So if you work 50 hour weeks but get 6 weeks paid leave, that should be taken into account.
harrytuttle 13y ago
I do a 35 hour week religiously. I do not get paid for overtime, therefore I do not do overtime. We're not here to prop up these businesses with poor efficiency and mismanagement; we're there to get paid for our time. The more people who bend on this, the worse it will get, resulting in an Americanesque slavery system where 80 hours a week and a 3 hour commute every day is considered acceptable.
- rorrr2 13y ago
  Almost nobody I know works 80 hours/week. It's only acceptable in some industries like finance. Whenever a company mentioned long hours (even well paid ones), I immediately stopped interviewing for them. That kind of life isn't worth the money.
- wikiburner 13y ago
  "But I Am Le Tired..."
- babarock 13y ago
  I never counted the hours I spend at my job. Not once. Lucky for me, probably, neither does my employer. I'm paid to get the job done, not to show my face at the office for a certain amount of time per week. Some weeks are more intense than others. It happens, so what? I'll put in the extra effort, and get the job done. It helps staying motivated when the bosses are putting in the extra hours with you. The opposite of what you call "Americanesque slavery system" is this, oh-so-common system in France, where people have no passion for their job, care only about the salary and picture quality time only "outside" of work. I spend too much time working to not care. If my job wasn't fulfilling I wouldn't be doing it. Disclaimer: I'm in my twenties with no family to feed, no financial debt and generally very little financial responsibilities. I don't know how long I can afford demanding having an interesting job.
  - mike-cardwell 13y ago
    "people have no passion for their job, care only about the salary and picture quality time only "outside" of work." I'd wager a higher proportion of people in the US feel this way about their job than in France. At least a dead end job in France gives you reasonable work hours and plenty of holiday.
gadders 13y ago
Just as an anecdote, I have a team that is split London/Paris and I've not noticed any appreciable difference in hours worked between the two locations.
sotirisk 13y ago
I'm from Greece. We have 40h work weeks since the first of May 1892. Overtime pay is a joke for any Greek worker. We are expected to work overtime until all daily tasks are completed and then leave. Seriously people who live in countries with 35h work weeks and overtime payments have it really easy.
- claudius 13y ago
  It’s not only about how long you work but also about how much work you get done in that time. Though I guess that this specifically is a case of not feeding trolls.
g4ur4v 13y ago
In India we have 45 hour week "on paper" and tend to extend 50 hours a week on average. 40 hours a week is no big deal here in India.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  If you pay them, Indians will work hard and get things done. My last startup used a lot of Indian labor. My next one probably will too, once it reaches the point of needing it. Can't see any reason I'd try to hire labor in France. Sounds expensive and painful.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - g4ur4v 13y ago
    Talking about hard work, a lot of people in India have this perception that working for long hours is working hard and many times they end up working long hours with very less productivity.In IT companies in India , it has become more of a working culture to work for long hours and no one seems to have any problem with it.
mhd 13y ago
If you check the European statistics, you'll find that most countries pretty much have the same working hours per week, with the UK being a notable exception (but only by one or two hours, we're not talking US/Korean levels). Edit: Checked my source again, and it seems that hours in the UK are going down, and anyways, the big "leader" is Iceland. Although, given their population size, those statistics might be skewed by one guy who's really pulling some overtime. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tps00071&plugin=0 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init...
gmac 13y ago
The UK's New Economics Foundation have an interesting report for anyone interested in this topic: http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours
culshaw 13y ago
I've been working regular 40hr weeks since I first started in the advertising/design industry, as a developer. I don't get paid for overtime yet am expected to work overtime where necessary. It is normal in this industry but it's not considered right. If I get the job done in a shorter amount of time then they'll find another job for me to do, if it takes me too long, then I have to work late. There is no 'leave early' clause.
thehme 13y ago
This article is pretty interesting because I was not aware there was some notion of French being lazy at all. In fact, as the author mentions, the fact that stats show that French work longer then they should, is definitely an indication of their wanting to work hard. Hopefully overworking is not negatively affecting other areas of their lives. I think that underdeveloped countries will always have overworked people willing to overwork (perhaps underpaid too), but developed countries give people the opportunity to work what they are paid for and step up to the occasion when needed - not forcefully, but because you want to and you can.
zamzamzom 13y ago
This article seems biased, it states the normal french work week is close to 40h outside of RTT. What are RTT or Réduction du temps de Travail ? Additional days off you can take whenever corresponding to the time over 35h/week you worked. In other words it is expected to find that a regular work week "outside of RTT" to be close to 40h, and closer to 35h taking RTT into account. Now RTT is one mechanism that was put there to work around employers who didn't want to play along with the 35h week, as in have employees work less so you can hire a an additional employee. It is usually understood that employers didn't want play along from the get go, some even abused this to turn to permanent temporary workers thus increasing unemployment rate. Unemployment rate in France actually comes with a PR catch, the numbers reported usually are for category A of people registered as looking for a job which is only one of 5 categories ranging from A to B [1] which changed from earlier categories ranging from 1 to 5 till 1995 then went to 8 differents categories from 1995 to 2008 [2]. [1]: http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/F13240.xhtml http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/F13240.xhtml [2]: http://www.insee.fr/fr/methodes/default.asp?page=definitions/categor-demandes-emploi-anpe.htm http://www.insee.fr/fr/methodes/default.asp?page=definitions...

65 points by waxzce 13y ago

jib 13y ago

What kind of weird thinking is that? "(ie outside of vacations, holidays and RTT days)." RTT days are specifically extra days off to get you down to 35hours/week. Hours/year would be a useful metric - hours / week, but filtering out weeks you have your time off isn't, unless you are somehow trying to argue that French working hours aren't sweet. I worked in a few different positions in France, I saw different contracts like 35h week, no RTT, 38h week,12RTT, 40h week, 24RTT. Arguing that the working week is longer for the guys who were working 40h/week, but had 49 days / year off (25 days of vacation + 24 RTTs) seems like using a metric intended to push an agenda. Someone on that schedule could literally take 1 day off every day of the week, should they so wish (if you include the bank holidays, which would amount to another 10 days or so / year, depending on how they fall).

nolok 13y ago

I don't know about industrial jobs, but everyone I know in IT, in marketing, ... Never really worked 35h, instead my contract says 39h (35h + 4h overtime) - for reference the worktime before 35h was 40h. And people who work even longer hours, have more overtime hours. What the law changed is not how long you can work, but where the overtime hours threshold is. This article, which claims the 35h worktime is fading, obviously doesn't know what it talks about, it has never been the norm in the "real world", outside of some specific areas such as public jobs. Which probably why they don't have any graph to show the actual worked hours change over the years, as that would go against what they claim.

lrem 13y ago

From my observation the work time is getting longer mainly because of influx of people desperate enough to do unpaid overtime. My wife's management is doing 7hrs/day. She's feeling quite insecure, so she's doing 9hrs/day, still being paid for the 7.

coldtea 13y ago
Companies will take advantage of EVERY available way available to them to have employess work more for less pay. If modern Western companies were allowed to use slavery or child labour, they would jump at the chance. It's a "competitive advantage", after all. That's what they do when they outsource to the third world anyway, take advantage of people in need to exploit them more than what a "westerner" would tolerate -- including children, and, in some cases, including beating them or even killing them if they attempt to demand better conditions (see Coca Cola in Latin America, Shell in Nigeria, etc). Just as they did in the West during the 19th century, early 20th century etc -- it's not that they changed their mind, it's just that labour laws now prevent them.
- lrem 13y ago
  I would not say it is that bad. I'm not even aware of any explicit pressure from the management on doing the overtime. This would probably be illegal anyways. It's just the fear of failure (in a country that will probably fail soon). I hear the word "crisis" way too often, even though it still seems to be a seller's market for techies. Companies all around me are expanding like crazy, while the (especially junior) workers seem to really fear unemployment.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    > I would not say it is that bad. I'm not even aware of any explicit pressure from the management on doing the overtime. This would probably be illegal anyways. Here in the US, I've known many people who do not work in the tech industry that have experienced this kind of management pressure. Management doesn't explicitly state you will lose your job for not working more, but threats or implied loss of status, salary, or having your work transferred to someone else makes you very paranoid about losing your job. For some kinds of industries and services, this is a big deal because hiring is not nearly as fast or plentiful as it is in tech right n ow.
    - lrem 13y ago
      Well, you know... Back in the day, my father was explicitly told to accept unpaid overtime AND a hefty salary cut, or it's not a problem to find someone to replace him. Which he accepted. And got fired after a year anyways, to be replaced with a friend of the new owner. Now he's a quite successful entrepreneur :)

shin_lao 13y ago

I'm sorry but we have too many vacations and it's hurting business. Very often we can't reach a person because he's off and the proxy has no clue. This is very true at big corp. We wasted a lot of time that way. Employees may have trouble to take all their vacations (around 32 days a year + holidays) and this increases costs greatly, because sorry, but it's always more efficient to keep the head count as low as possible. Last but not least, this affected salaries negatively. What we were forced to give as vacations we didn't give as salary (although we try to be as generous as possible). edit: It seems unclear when I talk about "we can't reach a person" that I'm talking about our customers/vendors who have people sometimes away for a whole month (generally May).

harrytuttle 13y ago
Your business is being hurt because it is mismanaged, not because there are people taking too many vacations.
coldtea 13y ago
>I'm sorry but we have too many vacations and it's hurting business. Very often we can't reach a person because he's off and the proxy has no clue. This is very true at big corp. We wasted a lot of time that way. If you have that problem, then your management and the way the company is run is BS. It's not about persons not being there a mere few hours less per week.
- shin_lao 13y ago
  You should re-read my comment. I'm talking about our customers who have this problem, resulting in us having the problem because we can't get the right person. The problem is not being there few hours less per week but being in vacations a lot. For example the whole month of May is a pure write off every year. Your theory about my management being disorganized is very naive. Have you ever run a company? However well organized you might be at some point you have to interface with the outside world which is pure chaos.
  - king_jester 13y ago

fab13n 13y ago

This law allowed very positive changes, even if they aren't the officially intended ones. In exchange for a 10% work time reduction, largely compensated by years of near-zero salary rises, it lead unions to accept a lot of flexibility improvements, which are usually impossible to get through in France. (there's as much flexibility as anywhere else in France, but very poorly distributed: indeterminate work contracts are ridiculously stable, and everyone else is exceedingly precarious) As for the 35h week, most professionals such as engineers never wanted it nor got it. Instead, we keep contracts in fixed number of days per year, rather than hours per week, and we get an extra 10 days or so of paid vacations called "RTT". Extra vacations are more affordable in France than in many other countries: being a very touristic place, French people spend a lot of their vacation time in France, hence a lot of their vacation money back into French economy.

fab13n 13y ago
> being in a very touristic place, French people spend a lot of their vacation time in France. Also, many companies mandate that RTT days are taken regularly (to avoid having the company effectively closed for the whole summer, as well as half of december), which means no more than one or two days at once. This means many short vacations rather than few long ones, also improving the incentive to spend locally.
joonix 13y ago
Right, we should calculate average hours per week by total hours worked per year divided by number of weeks one was paid. So if you work 50 hour weeks but get 6 weeks paid leave, that should be taken into account.

harrytuttle 13y ago

I do a 35 hour week religiously. I do not get paid for overtime, therefore I do not do overtime. We're not here to prop up these businesses with poor efficiency and mismanagement; we're there to get paid for our time. The more people who bend on this, the worse it will get, resulting in an Americanesque slavery system where 80 hours a week and a 3 hour commute every day is considered acceptable.

rorrr2 13y ago
Almost nobody I know works 80 hours/week. It's only acceptable in some industries like finance. Whenever a company mentioned long hours (even well paid ones), I immediately stopped interviewing for them. That kind of life isn't worth the money.
wikiburner 13y ago
"But I Am Le Tired..."
babarock 13y ago
I never counted the hours I spend at my job. Not once. Lucky for me, probably, neither does my employer. I'm paid to get the job done, not to show my face at the office for a certain amount of time per week. Some weeks are more intense than others. It happens, so what? I'll put in the extra effort, and get the job done. It helps staying motivated when the bosses are putting in the extra hours with you. The opposite of what you call "Americanesque slavery system" is this, oh-so-common system in France, where people have no passion for their job, care only about the salary and picture quality time only "outside" of work. I spend too much time working to not care. If my job wasn't fulfilling I wouldn't be doing it. Disclaimer: I'm in my twenties with no family to feed, no financial debt and generally very little financial responsibilities. I don't know how long I can afford demanding having an interesting job.
- mike-cardwell 13y ago
  "people have no passion for their job, care only about the salary and picture quality time only "outside" of work." I'd wager a higher proportion of people in the US feel this way about their job than in France. At least a dead end job in France gives you reasonable work hours and plenty of holiday.

gadders 13y ago

Just as an anecdote, I have a team that is split London/Paris and I've not noticed any appreciable difference in hours worked between the two locations.

sotirisk 13y ago

I'm from Greece. We have 40h work weeks since the first of May 1892. Overtime pay is a joke for any Greek worker. We are expected to work overtime until all daily tasks are completed and then leave. Seriously people who live in countries with 35h work weeks and overtime payments have it really easy.

claudius 13y ago
It’s not only about how long you work but also about how much work you get done in that time. Though I guess that this specifically is a case of not feeding trolls.

g4ur4v 13y ago

In India we have 45 hour week "on paper" and tend to extend 50 hours a week on average. 40 hours a week is no big deal here in India.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
If you pay them, Indians will work hard and get things done. My last startup used a lot of Indian labor. My next one probably will too, once it reaches the point of needing it. Can't see any reason I'd try to hire labor in France. Sounds expensive and painful.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- g4ur4v 13y ago
  Talking about hard work, a lot of people in India have this perception that working for long hours is working hard and many times they end up working long hours with very less productivity.In IT companies in India , it has become more of a working culture to work for long hours and no one seems to have any problem with it.

mhd 13y ago

If you check the European statistics, you'll find that most countries pretty much have the same working hours per week, with the UK being a notable exception (but only by one or two hours, we're not talking US/Korean levels). Edit: Checked my source again, and it seems that hours in the UK are going down, and anyways, the big "leader" is Iceland. Although, given their population size, those statistics might be skewed by one guy who's really pulling some overtime. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tps00071&plugin=0 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init...

gmac 13y ago

The UK's New Economics Foundation have an interesting report for anyone interested in this topic: http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours

culshaw 13y ago

I've been working regular 40hr weeks since I first started in the advertising/design industry, as a developer. I don't get paid for overtime yet am expected to work overtime where necessary. It is normal in this industry but it's not considered right. If I get the job done in a shorter amount of time then they'll find another job for me to do, if it takes me too long, then I have to work late. There is no 'leave early' clause.

thehme 13y ago

This article is pretty interesting because I was not aware there was some notion of French being lazy at all. In fact, as the author mentions, the fact that stats show that French work longer then they should, is definitely an indication of their wanting to work hard. Hopefully overworking is not negatively affecting other areas of their lives. I think that underdeveloped countries will always have overworked people willing to overwork (perhaps underpaid too), but developed countries give people the opportunity to work what they are paid for and step up to the occasion when needed - not forcefully, but because you want to and you can.

zamzamzom 13y ago

This article seems biased, it states the normal french work week is close to 40h outside of RTT. What are RTT or Réduction du temps de Travail ? Additional days off you can take whenever corresponding to the time over 35h/week you worked. In other words it is expected to find that a regular work week "outside of RTT" to be close to 40h, and closer to 35h taking RTT into account. Now RTT is one mechanism that was put there to work around employers who didn't want to play along with the 35h week, as in have employees work less so you can hire a an additional employee. It is usually understood that employers didn't want play along from the get go, some even abused this to turn to permanent temporary workers thus increasing unemployment rate. Unemployment rate in France actually comes with a PR catch, the numbers reported usually are for category A of people registered as looking for a job which is only one of 5 categories ranging from A to B [1] which changed from earlier categories ranging from 1 to 5 till 1995 then went to 8 differents categories from 1995 to 2008 [2]. [1]: http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/F13240.xhtml http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/F13240.xhtml [2]: http://www.insee.fr/fr/methodes/default.asp?page=definitions/categor-demandes-emploi-anpe.htm http://www.insee.fr/fr/methodes/default.asp?page=definitions...