French workers fight for the right to be lazy

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Question: Wouldn't French productivity growth have something to do with the 35 hour work week and the high cost of labor. It's a built in incentive to squeeze all the productivity out of each worker since costs are so high and low productivity jobs simply move over seas. If we eliminate all the low productivity jobs it looks good on paper but it also means they've lost a great many job fields.

It has to do with it. However, we lost our low-productivity job far sooner than the Yanks (the US fear of "outsourcing" is sooo 1993 to us). Also, very high-return sector is not as important here as in the US (biotech, computers). As such, I'm not sure the difference in productivity per hour is due to structural differences in the economic sectors - I think it has much more to do with the fact that we have enough free time to do our free-time activities outside of the workplace.

[RGBVideo]

Spiffor, could you read my post and answer this question of mine:

am I missing something here?

I'm having a feeling that I am...

[DanS]

in terms of employment/working age population the EU is slightly below the US (66.1% vs 66.9%), in terms of workforce/working age population it is actually above (71.8% vs 70.8%)

What's the working age in the EU? While this might not prove a significant difference with regard to some EU countries, I expect it might prove so with France.

DanS: Federal EU bureucracy is located in Luxembourg and southern Belgium. Don't underestimate the bureucrat's impact on the economy, they get massive amounts of federal money each year which they'll spend on the local economies.

I live in Washington, D.C. and have a tactile understanding of what that means.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


The productivity of a worker does not increase linearly with time at work. The unit productivity stays fairly constant for awhile, IIRC at around 6 - 7 hours a day, then drops off.

While I can accept this much

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


That means paying overtime to get extra work done isn't a good idea, you are better off getting some part-time help.

I'm not sure it leads to this conclusion since

1. Sikander's point was about the many additional costs related to a new employee. Even if the part timer is more productive than the overtime worker would have been, the cost of training and bringing the worer into your systems may be such that it is not worthwhile

2. Even though a worker's productivity may decline, an experienced worker is still likely to out-perform a new worker for quite a while (trainign period)

[Flubber]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Add in your commute time and time preparing for work, and you're over the top.

I'll acknowledge commute time as an integral part of working but I have difficulty with the "preparing for work part". What is that? Getting dressed, Showering and shaving?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by VJ
That's not the issue. The issue, the reason why the frogs are protesting now is a proposal to ALLOW private invididuals to work more than the goverment wants them IF THEY WANT TO.

I mean, am I missing something here? How can anyone who wants to support workers' rights oppose this proposal?

Because that easily becomes mandatory, i.e., volunteer to work overtime or lose your job. That's frequently how it works in the U.S. It's how we lost our 40 hour work week. If you need extra money, take a second job.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Question: Wouldn't French productivity growth have something to do with the 35 hour work week and the high cost of labor. It's a built in incentive to squeeze all the productivity out of each worker since costs are so high and low productivity jobs simply move over seas. If we eliminate all the low productivity jobs it looks good on paper but it also means they've lost a great many job fields.

I must be on ignore.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by el freako


If this was the case you would expect a very poor performance in the growth of French total hours worked

Why?

edit: nevermind. Oerdin wasn't saying what I though he was after all.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Well duh. And I was talking about you.

This is the story of right wing ideology. Some selfish people see problems that humanity has. They also see that people have sympathy for their fellow humans. The selfish people say to themselves, "This is an opportunity for us." They create an ideology that says that creating benefits for themselves benefits the world. That is how right wing ideologies are created.

The definition of a moderate is someone who is blind to this.

If we are just name-calling I could say

"The story of left wing ideology is lazy people who have less look at those that have more and are envious. It is irrelevant that a person worked twice as much to get twice as much so they define fairness as being "I get what he has" so they take from those that work to give to the lazy".

Thats about as accurate as what you wrote kid

[chequita guevara]

Paul Lafargue (1841-1911), Karl Marx’s son-in-law, was a leading member of the French socialist movement and played an important rôle in the development of the Spanish socialist movement. A close friend of Friedrich Engels in his later years, he wrote and spoke from a fairly orthodox Marxist perspective on a wide-range of topics including women’s rights, anthropology, ethnology, reformism, Milleranderism, and economics.

The Right to be Lazy.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Flubber
Thats about as accurate as what you wrote kid

It's completely inaccurate. Read Candide by Voltaire. There is no natural order to society. Social order is created by people who have the power to do so.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
It's pretty crap. Quite often I need an hour extra or so to finish what I am doing but I do get paid for it, as should be anyone's entitlement...

Hmmm- I don't know-- I am salaried and while there is an assumption I will work a certain number of hours per week, I don't get more or less for weekly variation. I like this method

I do get a year end bonus based on billings though so extra work does get rewarded ( kid -- you will be appalled to learn that I am happy to take 30% of those extar billings as compensation)

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious


It's completely inaccurate. Read Candide by Voltaire. There is no natural order to society. Social order is created by people who have the power to do so.

hmm and this has what to do with anything you or I said in the previous two posts. You have this annoying habit with responding with a new sub-topic and acting like it was the subject all along.

Your 3rd and 4th sentences seem self-evident to me although it is difficult to define who has the power in western democracies. You would say those with money and it would be foolish to deny the "power of money" but there is also a lot of power with the electorate. We are long past the idea of a ruling class imposing things by decree.

[pchang]

French productivity just goes to show that nothing really changed in the French economy when they reduced the work week. You had the same output divided by smaller hours (as measured but how reliably?) and so productivity goes up. Fuzzy measurements and fuzzy math leads to fuzzy theories.

[Flubber]

Back on topic


How does the French law apply to salaried folks?? Take a schoolteacher-- The schoolday could be 6 hours a day, say and the treacher is expected to be there certain times before and after the school bell. But she likely works at home


As for hourly folks, if people want a 35 hour week, I can respect that and see no problem except there should be some flexibility. Take nurses-- you can't plan for when one gets sick and with a nursing shortage, you probably don't have a pool of people sitting around with the necessary skills and willing to come in. So a unit needs an additional nurse . .. realistically the only option is to call in a regular nurse for overtime. Mrs Flubber only works 22 hours a week and usually gets overtime ( double pay) if she works beyond that.

Any limit on hours worked needs to be reasonable and flexible. There are probably a number of fields where it is impossible to have a pool of waiting workers available if required, yet work needs to get done