Posted on 07/15/2004 7:00:27 PM PDT by blam
Warning for Chirac on 35-hour work week
By Philip Delves Broughton in Paris
(Filed: 16/07/2004)
French business leaders have criticised President Jacques Chirac yesterday for rejecting demands that he repeal the 35-hour working week.
Ernest-Antoine Selliere, head of the main business federation, MEDEF, said: "The 35-hour work week is not just a slippery slope. It's a chute towards economic decline." He added: "To say we won't touch the law, it's non-negotiable, well, I just can't understand that."
Hesitant: President Chirac
In his annual Bastille Day television interview, Mr Chirac said he would try to loosen some restrictions in the law to allow people to work longer than 35 hours if they wanted to. But he ruled out wholesale reform or repeal, describing the 35-week as the French workers' untouchable right.
Mr Chirac's hesitant approach stems from his previous experiences trying to ram economic and labour reforms past the unions. In 1997, his economic programme prompted a general strike which paralysed France for weeks and led ultimately to the loss of his parliamentary majority.
Mr Chirac this time said it was up to businesses and unions to reach agreements to slacken the rules governing the 35-hour week.
The government is keenly watching events at a Bosch car parts plant near Lyons. Its German owners have threatened to relocate the factory to the Czech Republic, where costs are much lower, unless workers agree to work at least 36 hours a week. The results of a vote this week are expected on Monday.
Marie-George Buffet, leader of the French Communist Party, said Mr Chirac's desire to modify the working week rules was a "considerable step backwards" in France's social progress.
Mr Chirac's finance minister and chief political rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, has said legal restrictions barring workers from working longer hours for extra money stifle ambition and hopes for social and economic advancement.
Germans vs the Frogs - I wonder who will prevail?
"Its German owners have threatened to relocate the factory to the Czech Republic, where costs are much lower, unless workers agree to work at least 36 hours a week... "
So what does the German think the guy will do with that extra hour? a 35 hr week as opposed to a 36 hr week?? Man thats rough having to work 36 hours. Do you folks know we have Federal Firefighters working 56 and 64 hr weeks?
The Germans and the French live in fantasy land.
I read this and I said to myself, wow this really represents the France that I have come to associate with Jerry Lewis and the Oil for France scandal. First, you have a politician whose first name is composed of both a woman's and a man's name - kinda like Kelly Bundy being named Peggy-Al Bundy. Second, you have a leader of a communist party which still calls itself The Communist Party and which continues to weilds real power in France. Then you have a government that has passed a law that literally prevents people from working 'too' much. Then you have Frenchies who can actually say with a straight face that preventing people from working as much as they want is a basic human right, along the lines of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Then, the most hilarious thing of all is the assertion that France has engaged in some serious social progress over the past few decades by preventing people from working too much. France, what a country
Yes, true progress will be acheived when no one has to work anymore. (morons)
Many Americans work 50, 60 and even 70 hour weeks. Some self-employed do even more.
That's why our economy is better than France's or Germany's.
Once the French business leaders make their bribe offer large enough, Chirac will give them what they want!
It's kinda funny, the name of the German plant, Bosch, is so close in spelling to "Boche" which was the dirty name the French called the Germans during WW1 and WWII.
Good point!:)
man, this sounds reeeaaallly sick! they say chirac was speaking at a Beastiality Day celebration! man!
even bill CLINTON didn't speak at a french Beastiality Day celebration.
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