In France, a Move to Limit Off-the-Clock Work Emails
PARIS: Given France’s 35-hour workweek, generous vacations and persistent,
if not altogether accurate, 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.
Labor
unions and corporate representatives in France have agreed on an
“obligation to disconnect from remote communications tools” that would
apply to 250,000 employees of consulting, computing and polling firms.
The accord, signed this month but yet to be approved by the Labor
Ministry, would require that employers verify that the 11 hours of daily
“rest” time to which all workers are legally entitled be spent
uninterrupted.
“We
really want there to be 11 consecutive hours,” said Marie Buard, a
project leader at the Federation of Communication, Consulting and
Culture, a branch of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor.
Still, Ms. Buard said, “We also wouldn’t like this to squeeze businesses
and cause them problems.”
Under
the agreement, she said, each company would 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
reveled at another opportunity to confirm scornful stereotypes about the
French. Several websites, Twitter feeds and other news outlets in Britain
lost no time in misconstruing the agreement on Thursday, asserting that
France had banned email after 6 p.m. or that one million 35-hour-a-week
workers would be covered by the accord.
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 perhaps 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 is meant to establish safeguards that would ensure
balance in the lives of employees, many of whom work with foreign
companies in far-flung time zones, Ms. Lebon said.
“For
us, it was extremely important to say that the employers in this sector
are very attentive to the health of our employees,” she said.
French
labor law is highly protective of workers’ rights, but businesses and
even some officials in the French government say it is a significant
impediment to economic growth. With the economy stagnant and the
unemployment rate above 10 percent, President François Hollande has
pledged billions of euros in tax cuts for businesses, part of a broader
effort to make French companies more competitive.
Mr. Balensi, at Syntec, said, “If you don’t have employees who are in good health, your competitiveness is going to fall.”
A version of this article appears in print on April 12, 2014 in New York Times, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Deal Seeks a Respite From Email
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