France: Companies Not Allowed To Contact Employees Electronically After Work Day Is Over

If you happen to stay in France and earn a living there, then you might be familiar with the following. They happen to have a 35 hour work week (do bear in mind that the 35-hour working week happens to be a measure that was first adopted in France back in February 2000, under the watch of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin’s Plural Left government. The 35 hours happen to be the legal standard limit, where working more than that would be overtime) as well as up to six weeks of paid vacation (well, for the luckiest of them, but certainly not most), now how does that sound to those overworked worker drones out there?

Still, French workers continue to get contacted by the office for work related stuff even when they have already clocked out, which is something that most of us would think to be pretty normal these days.

I guess they do it differently in France, where a deal that was signed by tech industry employers and several unions in that part of Europe would mean the law forbids companies affected to contact employees electronically once their work day is done with.

Needless to say, the worker groups are more than happy to hear about this particular news, but since there are always two sides to a coin, you can be sure that there will be some unhappy people around, too.

Considering how France happens to have a large digital sector, not to mention being plagued by bureaucracy being a major complaint among critics, this latest labor-friendly law would certainly place employers at a disadvantage. I guess this is where being as efficient as possible in the office itself would be the key to keeping everyone happy.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: email, france