It is widely known that compared to the American worker, the European worker works on average less hours per work week. This is due to the strong unions in Europe that fight for benefits such as: fringes, longer vacations, and the aforementioned shorter work week hours. In 1998, France adopted a thirty-five hour work week considerable much less than the 2012 average American work week of forty-six hours. These worker benefits were taken to a new level when France introduced rules to protect people in the digital and consultancy sectors from work emails outside office hours. The employers federation and unions signed a deal stating employees will have to switch off work phones and not check work emails. Additionally, the firms cannot pressure employees to respond to email after 6:00pm.
France has not been the country to adopt this email ban. In December 2011, German automaker Volkswagen announced their servers would stop sending emails thirty minutes before the of employees' shifts. The servers could not resume sending emails until thirty minutes before the employees' shifts began the next morning.
Could such a deal find its way into the American workforce in the near future, I think not; but who knows, America is adopting more progressive attitudes by the day……..
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26958079
3 comments:
Employees should not have be expected to read their work email while they are not working. However, it does same time for the employees to check their email outside of work hours. They can be more productive with more important tasks that have to be done in the office rather than checking email.
I think someone will use the "invisible hand" argument for this. People will do what they find beneficial for them. Anyway I think that won't work for U.S.
Has this led to the increase of France's debt? Because it allows for more vacation time. But isn't this good? Shouldn't we want to not work as much or would it lead the U.S in a poor direction?
In France even if you work at subway you get about a month off for vacation and a week or two of paid vacation. What are the repercussions for these decision? Cause otherwise I want these benefits.
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