Of course, some Americans may recoil at such Keynesian interventionism. While unapologetically suckling from the state’s teat, French workers also benefit from fiscal stimulus at a high rate, with some 240,000 jobs directly generated by government in 2011.
And, The New Yorker observes, they maintain “a stronger social support network and a much better work-life balance than Americans (not to mention better bread, cheese, and wine).” Compared to US quality of life, French people spend hundreds more hours annually on leisure and personal care, enjoy over twice as many vacation days and yet end up with a third more disposable household income.
But as neoliberalism crystallized in the 1980s, “Europe consolidated its generous welfare state, and the US, under Ronald Reagan, began dismantling its own in the name of making its economy more competitive.” And American work schedules have accelerated toward an ever-more feverish pace (even as actual earnings sag).Īmericans might rethink France’s reputed “laziness” as efficiency tempered by joie de vivre. As The New Yorker reports, during the last century, working hours declined on both sides of the Atlantic. And according to 2011 data, the French actually work about forty hours per week, despite the thirty-five-hour limit-somewhat below Germany but about comparable to the EU average.įrom a historical standpoint, America is the outlier. Last year saw a rash of “lazy French” headlines, stemming from the embittered commentary of Morry Taylor, CEO of the tire company Titan, who railed in a published letter: “They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three.… They told me that’s the French way…!”Īnd yet, the pathos of la belle vie has not stopped the OECD from ranking France among the most “productive” countries in terms of GDP per hour worked. Outside commentators tend to fixate on France’s robust labor protections, such as its religiously observed Sunday work holiday-as if they were bizarre medieval lost rites (conservatives deploy terms like “anti-growth” and “dangerously uncompetitive”). The trope of the atrophying welfare regime has long played opposite the can-do vigor of American-style capitalism. More curious than the e-mail proposition was the grossly inaccurate media portrayal-echoing a time-honored tradition of deriding the French as effete snobs on the one hand, and retrograde European welfare spongers on the other. There are, as one French worker told the BBC, “moments when you just need to chillax.… Good for business, good for people, as well.” The German Labor Ministry and Volkswagen’s administration have recently enacted similar curbs on after-work contact between staff and higher-ups. Besides, France’s famous thirty-five-hour workweek does not apply to these workers, and they are generally allowed up to seventy-eight work-hours in a given week-hardly a life of leisure. The agreement covers mid-managerial professionals whose schedules tend to be more erratic-or what corporate America terms “flexible.” The 250,000 affected employees represent some of the most stressed-out “knowledge economy” workers, and the labor arrangement simply aims to limit stress by placing some restrictions to how much work intrudes on the personal lives of workers.
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