Article

2005-04-29 Europe

French unemployment hits 5 year high - Worse to come

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Posted by phil_b 2005-04-29 03:10|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 As much as I'd like to have a 35 hour work week and 6 week vacations - it's just not competitive with the rest of the world. Propping up corrupt mismanaged companies (as opposed to letting them go bankrupt and putting their CEO's in jail) isn't a good idea either.

Posted by AJackson 2005-04-29 7:33:26 AM|| 2005-04-29 7:33:26 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 The 35h work-week was introduced to reduce unemployment, by the way.

Imagine that: "we have a problem, people don't work enough; we have a solution, force them to work even less."

All statist responses to unemployment are wrong because they assume that "work" is a "pie" which must somehow be split in ever thinner "slices". Hence the notion that the solution to unemployment is to ration labor, i.e. make everybody work a little less (the French elite call it "the society of leisure").

Posted by Kalle (kafir forever) 2005-04-29 9:44:41 AM|| [http://radio.weblogs.com/0103811/categories/currentEvents/] 2005-04-29 9:44:41 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Unfortunately my wife has many European friends, and I'm just rude enough to talk politics with them.

On this subject, one of the defenses they have of this shortened workweek is that it forces people to spend time with their families. Ditto for forcing grocery stores to be closed on Sundays, late nights, etc.

My response is always if spending time with your family is important than you as an individual should find the right job. That floors them everytime because they instinctively look to governmental solution. The knockout blow is to point out that many young people would like to work hard when they have the energy so that they can build wealth before having a family. The artificially shortened workweek guts one of the most productive segments of your population.

Posted by Dreadnought 2005-04-29 10:37:52 AM|| 2005-04-29 10:37:52 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 On this subject, one of the defenses they have of this shortened workweek is that it forces people to..

Stop right there. If they are ready and willing to defend a government practice of forcing people to do things instead of letting them decide for themselves, then nothing else needs to be said or heard.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-04-29 12:22:07 PM|| 2005-04-29 12:22:07 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 Government fiat is a dumb way to enforce this, but the truth is that American professionals are far less productive and efficient than they could be precisely because they assume that there's no logical end to the work day. So busywork, re-work, endless revisions and scope expansion result. My French colleagues are much more productive than we are simply because they refuse to let meetings and projects and proposals drag out endlessly as so many Americans do.

The intelligent approach is to create a culture in which the norm is for people to leave the office no later than 6:30 or 7, and force them to work intelligently and reduce unnecessary scope expansion and revisions.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-29 12:30:51 PM|| 2005-04-29 12:30:51 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 BAR,

Ain't it the truth!

TB,

Scott Adams had a chaper at the end of one of his Dilbert books that he called OA5: Out at Five, which described the virtues of working smarter not harder (actually longer in this case). Having worked in several companies that prized "long" hours, I can tell you that the one thing they had in common was a very low retention rate, which meant that knowledge and competence simply bled out the door. The market eventually punishes bad behavior. No Al Gore solutions required for that.

Posted by Dreadnought 2005-04-29 12:38:55 PM|| 2005-04-29 12:38:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 I agree it's not a problem for Al-Gore or the nanny state. But the market takes a vewwy long time to punish companies, long after many thousands of families have been damaged. It's a culture-wide problem, not limited to just a few bad firms.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-29 12:41:13 PM|| 2005-04-29 12:41:13 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 "Unfortunately my wife has many European friends, and I'm just rude enough to talk politics with them. On this subject, one of the defenses they have of this shortened workweek is that it forces people to spend time with their families"

Yes, like the French children taking care of their parents during a heatwave. Forced time off saw lots of quality time w/the family...

Posted by Francis 2005-04-29 2:43:47 PM|| 2005-04-29 2:43:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 #5 overall what is so may be correct in some intances..I have been in countless meetings where you talk and no execution..lets you know who not to count on..

but numbers should speak louder...if the french and euros were that intelligent in their approach to busniness then why are they not number one? or two productivity?

american business seems to outclass the euros at every turn ... that doesn't happen when you have people doing 'busywork'....

Posted by Dan 2005-04-29 5:31:19 PM|| 2005-04-29 5:31:19 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 I was speaking mainly about US professionals working in large corporations, not hourly staff or the self-employed. The latter are far more productive than their west european counterparts, but French corporate pros are at least as productive as their peers in corporate America. Especially if one were to measure productivity in terms of output per professional man-hour rather than per person.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-29 5:39:00 PM|| 2005-04-29 5:39:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 AMerica's productivity advantage is almost entirely concentrated in the technology and retail (esp big-box, esp Walmart) sectors. One Nobellist economist analyzed our productivity gains from 1997-2002 and determined that fully one-third of this increase was attributable to Walmart's process and IT improvements. Corporate America overall is still hugely inefficient.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-29 5:44:17 PM|| 2005-04-29 5:44:17 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 The 35h work-week was introduced to reduce unemployment, by the way

Yes, the logic was: the work still has to be done, so companies will have to hire more people to take up the slack.

Posted by Pappy 2005-04-29 7:20:23 PM|| 2005-04-29 7:20:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Lex is right the average French worker is almost 25% more productive per hour worked than the average American. It is well understood with considerable research to back it up that within certain limits increasing the time worked does not increase to anything like the same extent the work completed. Its a variation on Parkinson's law - Work expands to fit the time aloted. However, this in no way justifies the French governments idiotic attempts at social engineering.

Posted by phil_b 2005-04-29 7:38:28 PM|| 2005-04-29 7:38:28 PM|| Front Page Top

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