PARIS — Given France’s
35-hour workweek, generous vacations and persistent reputation for indolence,
it may come as a surprise that the French are only now considering limits on
the work emails and phone calls that come at all hours of the day and night.
Last week labor unions and corporate
representatives in France agreed on an “obligation to disconnect from remote
communications tools” that will apply to 250,000 employees of consulting,
computing and polling firms.
After the Labor
Ministry approves the accord, the employers will have to verify that all
workers spend 11 hours of uninterrupted daily “rest
Under the agreement
each company will develop a policy and enforcement mechanisms. One might choose
to block communications from 11 p.m. to 10 a.m. by shutting down its email
servers, while another might simply ask employees not to check email between 9
p.m. and 8 a.m.
Similar limits have been tested
elsewhere. In 2011, Volkswagen started shutting off its BlackBerry servers at the end of the workday, stopping some
employees in Germany from sending or receiving
emails. Last year, the German Labor Ministry ordered its supervisors not to
contact employees outside office hours.
But
the British press did not seem to notice the German precedents, and several
websites, Twitter feeds and other news outlets in Britain confirmed stereotypes
about the French and claimed “Work emails after 6pm are banned in France. The accord will cover all French 35-hour-a- week
workers”.
The image of French
people “who don’t get anything done, who just take vacations — that’s not what
this is about at all,” said Max Balensi, an official with the Syntec
federation, one of the employers’ groups that signed the accord. Mr. Balensi,
who said he previously worked for Accenture and BP — not French companies —
called such reports “disinformation.”
In fact, the agreement
will affect 250,000 consultants and technology workers whose contracts
stipulate only an annual number of workdays, but not daily working hours, said
Frédérique Lebon, a spokeswoman for Cinov, another employers’ federation that
signed the deal. The agreement will establish safeguards that will ensure
balance in the lives of employees, many of whom work with foreign companies in
far-flung time zones, Ms. Lebon said.
Mr. Balensi, at
Syntec, said, “If you don’t have employees who are in good health, your
competitiveness is going to fall.”
