35-hour workweek

[NNN0LHI]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek

The 35-hour working week is a measure adopted first in France, in February 2000, under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Plural Left government; it was pushed by then Minister of Labour Martine Aubry. The previous legal duration of the workweek was 39 hours, which had been established by François Mitterrand, also a member of the Socialist Party. The 35-hour working week was already in the Socialist Party's 1981 electoral program, titled 110 Propositions for France.

The 35 hours was the legal standard limit, after which further working time was to be considered overtime. The law has since been substantially weakened and exceptions have become established.

Rationale

(See working time for further discussion of the health and leisure-related reasons for limited work weeks.)

The main stated objectives of the law were two-fold:

To reduce unemployment and yield a better division of labor, in a context where some people work long hours while some others are unemployed. A 10.2% decrease in the hours extracted from each worker would, theoretically, require firms to hire correspondingly more workers, a remedy for unemployment.

To take advantage of improvements in productivity of modern society in order to give workers some more personal time in order to enhance their quality of life.

Another reason was that the Jospin administration took advantage of the changes introduced with the 35-hour working week in order to relax other workforce legislation.

[jaksavage]

1. I like the 30

no wait, 25 hour work week better.

[DesertFlower]

5. for the same pay? forget about it.

actually, one time i worked the night shift. it was a 30 hour week with the same pay as 35.

[hfojvt]

11. I like 32. - Four 8 hour days.

That would be like 10 weeks of vacation a year.

Of course, I recently took a huge paycut to go from 40 to 20 back in September 2006.

[Xithras]

21. My office does 4-10's in the summer.

It was first implemented to cut energy usage, but everyone likes the three day weekends every week.

[DesertFlower]

2. in new york city 35 hours is the normal

work week.

[fenriswolf]

3. *sigh

im on here all the time.


because I'm at work all the time

60+ hour work week

i do tech support, I don't have projects all the time, I just need the hours to stay afloat. I don't even own a house.

[DesertFlower]

7. i worked those hours, but was paid overtime

after 35 hours -- double time on sundays and triple on holidays. i did it for years and i think that's why i came down with "chronic fatigue syndrome".

[fenriswolf]

9. yeah just a contractor (after eight months)

so i only ever get time and a half.

[DesertFlower]

15. i worked in a law firm.

i had very good benefits. first year -- 4 weeks vacation.

if you had to be at work before 7 am and left after 7 pm we got a limo home. also got a limo on weekends and holidays. we also got lunch and dinner money if we were on overtime.

on the downside, it could be very stressful.

[LibertyLover]

26. Same deal when I worked in law firms in the 1980s and 1990s

It was fun at first, but after a couple weeks of 20 hour days and virtually no sleep, I decided it was not for me. So, now I work in the legal department of a non-governmental organization in Washington DC. I get 6 weeks of vacation since I've been there over 10 years. We work an 8.5 hour day. I do work late some days, but in the 12 years I've been there, I've only worked 3 all nighters. I do occasionally have to make calls to China or Indonesia from home around 10 or 11 pm or participate in a conference call, but hey, it's at home. I can be in my pajamas with the dogs cuddling around me and a beverage of choice in my hand. And since I work on projects literally all around the world it's really interesting. Right now I'm working on a project in Moldova, one in Bulgaria, a couple in Indonesia and China, Costa Rica, Honduras, Peru, Turkey and Nigeria.

[Fovea]

8. Man do I hear u

back when i was a code monkey, I loved those sixty hour weeks, they were so much nicer than the sixty five hour weeks, particularly when part of that was air time.

The only forty hour weeks were when i was between work. And that was shaking the trees for work.

And then I nearly died.

[SheilaT]

4. Among the reasons we went

from a 60 hour work week to a 40 hour work week in this country during the Great Depression was to create more jobs.

[Lorien]

6. Makes sense to me. Unfortunately I've been putting in 50-60 hours every

week for the past seven years without a vacation. When I worked at a large Feature Animation studio 60-85 hours a week was considered "average". I haven't seen a 35 hour work week since High School!

[tridim]

13. I completely understand, I'm an IT slave

Overtime? What the hell is that?

I long for the day when IT is unionized, but I think we're afraid that our jobs will just be outsourced if we rise up. I've been taken advantage of for about 7 straight years now. 60 hour weeks are standard, no vacation, no sick days, nothing. If I try to just put in 8 hours a day I get screamed at by three or four different people. I'm basically living in the "Office Space" script.

[Iris]

10. Isn't the new guy who just married the supermodel trying to do away with the 35-hour workweek?

I thought that was one of the things he ran on.

[cloudbase]

12. My sister has a pretty sweet deal.

She's a nurse, and works 16 hours on Saturday and 16 on Sunday. She gets paid for a standard 40 hour week, and has the regular workweek off.

[tridim]

14. Wow, I'd do that in a second!

I know it's tough work, but having 5 days off in a row would be dreamy.

[hunter]

19. In many hospitals that's pretty brutal.

You'd almost need those five days off to keep your sanity.

[Skittles]

24. I don't want anyone making important decisions

who has been working more than 12 hours - it's crap. I work 12 hour shifts and I know what it feels like at the end of the shift or when it bleeds into 13, 14, 15 hours - this "sweet" deal is f***ing dangerous.

[taught_me_patience]

16. I worked 60-80 hrs. per week when just starting my career

you gotta pay your dues when young. I'm down to 40-45 now, though.

[NNN0LHI]

18. My normal shift for over a decade was 7 twelve hour days with overtime

We had the choice of working 7 in the morning to 7 at night or 7 at night to 7 in the morning. Once in a great while we would go down to 7 eight hours days for a week or two and it felt like we were working only half a day.

Don

[Skittles]

23. not me

I'm 50 and worked 62 hours last week

[catnhatnh]

17. During the last "Great Depression"...

...congress actually sent a 30 or 32 hour week bill to FDR who traded it off for the CCC and other make work projects...he later said that was a mistake.With the productivity gains of the last ten years business could give back 20% of the workweek and STILL be ahead of 1990. Their gain would be reduced unemployment increasing the pool of available consumers...

[Xithras]

20. In the U.S., where most are paid hourly, that means a pay cut.

Unless you're one of the lucky few who gets a fixed salary, a cut in hours is essentially a cut in pay.

Besides, as I understand it, the limit in France really hasn't worked out all that well. Most employers simply increased demands on workers to get more done in less time instead of creating new jobs. Workers get more time off, but they're now worked even harder while they're actually working. There's a fairly strong movement in France to abolish the shorter week because it hasn't achieved any of its original goals.

[dflprincess]

22. Now we know why the U.S. government really wants to hate the French

I came to that conclusion after I saw "Sicko".

[ileus]

25. I'd vote for a 5 hour work week.