Weekend Work Emails Are Now Illegal In France

[Nfinitii]

America is fighting over who should use what restroom, France is fighting for their ppl to not have to work on their days off.

[Reeve]

Clients should be given realistic expectations. If it's a 6-8 week job that's what they should be told.

Doesn't work in a competitive marketplace. If I tell our clients that it's going to take 6-8 weeks to do their bid, they'll tell me to fuck off, because one of our competitors will submit a bid in the 3 weeks they need in order to hit their weather windows and budgets. I work in a buyer's market, and there are always competitors willing to come to the client's terms, so the clients never have a reason to compromise. Even if they did, they've got their own internal budgetary pressures to deal with, along with real world consequences of delays, such as loss of seasonality, holiday seasons, equipment availability and utilization, etc. which are critically important when a single down day could cost a half million dollars.


Wheee, I'm 34 pages into the 120 or so pages of contract stuff I have to read today...

[Daymanmb]

Yeah, that's the problem. You can try to be the paragon of employer morals or whatever, but the next guy will just come along and shit on you because he's happy to whip his employees into working 100 hours/week just to one-up you.

Makes a bit personal. Its more about the Capitalist mantra, "Profits above all else."

[Ornerybear]

it would be nice to have some backup on this in the US. my company always calls me when i have days off (not weekend) and even called me on my honeymoon. They wouldn't need to bother me if they would hire me a god damn engineer to solve problems so i'm not the only capable person in the building...

...I should also mention, that though i am on salary, it only means that my overtime is free. I don't get to leave early when theres nothing to do etc...I've had nothing to do all week, i live 10minutes from work, and they still wanted me to stay in the building twiddling my thumbs all this week with nothing to do because it makes the owner happy. FFS if you need me i live 10 minutes away, nothing that ever comes up is that immediate. PLUS i mostly use a computer and email, I can do that from home...ugh...

[Deleted]

Meh, France is heading in deep sh*t, 6/8 refineries are on strike and the other two need government help to deliver the oil/gaz etc. It's becoming very hard to fill up the tank. The french won't be able to even go to work.

[nextormento]

Doesn't work in a competitive marketplace.

Alternatively, your company can choose to take less projects, or hire more workers. Deadlines can be met without slaving your workers.

At the end of the day, legislation like this will make the labor market less competitive. But there's very few reasons to have labor be ridiculously competitive beyond excellence. If the labor market is left unregulated, people leverage their capacity to work more and be paid less, which makes for a shit society.

[Forogil]

The idea that you can't send work emails after hours is silly. I would fully support making it illegal for companies to punish people (except specific positions) for not checking their emails during off hours, but to prevent them from being sent causes massive headaches.

As I understand that is exactly the intent.

There is nothing preventing your mail-box from receiving e-mails during off hours (which would be very difficult in an international company), it is just that you are not allowed to check/read/send e-mails during the off-hours, so the "sending" part is in reference to the one sending the mail not the one receiving it.

Anyone who has ever managed an office knows that there are days when you work very late. For large offices a mass email regarding a change or even a status update can be quite efficient.

True, but the one sending it must then (according to current EU-laws) rest a specified number of hours before going to the office the next day.
(And might also get kicked out the building before that by security guards who try to enforce the working hour rules.)

[Reeve]

Alternatively, your company can choose to take less projects, or hire more workers. Deadlines can be met without slaving your workers.

No, we can't. In the current oil industry market, we're lucky to have 3 projects going right now on razor thin margins. We have to win all the business we can get. Our competitors are doing the same thing. People are bidding projects at a loss just to provide some contribution margin to cover the costs of their fixed assets. It will take a miracle for my company to break even on a cash basis this year.

The idea that we could just hire more people is comical, when my company has already laid off 57% of our overhead just to theoretically hit break even. The idea that would could choose to go after fewer projects is comical when we're already struggling just to win the work we're already doing, which is 10% of the work we had 3 years ago.

Even when times are "good" in my industry, margins are thin, because there are few barriers to entry, lots of competitors, and the Chinese government subsidizes the hell out of their companies doing the type of work we do. There's seriously no expectation that our Chinese competitors have to make a profit.

And honestly, it's not "slaving your workers." When a bid is under a tight deadline, sometimes I have to do work on my off days. But then my boss is very flexible with me taking additional time off elsewhere without making me report those hours off. Last year I was given a full month of paid leave without having to touch my vacation days (to deal with my father's decline and death). It's not the end of the world to sometimes have to work weekends.

[Shakadam]

Really, something people need to do is properly evaluate their own pay.

First, get a handle on your actual hours. Putting in a 60 hour workweek? That's the baseline. Have an hour's commute each day, 5 days a week? That's 65 hours. Are you "on-call" during off hours? Count that as half pay, and add it in.

Now, take your amended workhours, and divide your weekly salary by that amount. That's your hourly wage. For instance, if this comes out to 80 hours, and you're working a salaried position for $40,000/year, that means you're wworking for less than $10/hour. Feel good about that? That's significantly less than minimum wage, up here. You could probably make more money working that hard at a couple burger joints.

I'm not saying don't work, but don't let your employer take advantage of you. If you end up working for less than minimum wage, all things considered, your employer is scamming you.

Wut? Where and when is 60 hours baseline? 37,5h (for office workers) or 40h is the norm here.I don't know anyone that would work 60h a week, that's 6 hours of overtime work every day, that's just nuts.

There is no way I'd work 60 hours a week unless I'm literally getting paid millions, and even then I wouldn't do it for very long.

[Crissi]

I see I got quoted while I was sleeping. I do believe in compensation for time worked, so emailing on the weekend should still be paid for. However I can't get behind making it illegal. It should be a choice because God forbid some people want to get their projects done before the deadline and just doing it during work hours may not be sufficient. Getting simpler projects or taking fewer of them is not always possible depending on the field.

While I do think the workaholic culture is a bit much, I would still take it over what I've seen from France considering I can't even enjoy my days off until a project is done

[Reeve]

Wut? Where and when is 60 hours baseline? 37,5h (for office workers) or 40h is the norm here.I don't know anyone that would work 60h a week, that's 6 hours of overtime work every day, that's just nuts.

There is no way I'd work 60 hours a week unless I'm literally getting paid millions, and even then I wouldn't do it for very long.

Heh, for about 2 years, I worked 112 hours per week (for 6 weeks, and then got 3 weeks vacation).

[Daymanmb]

Alternatively, your company can choose to take less projects, or hire more workers. Deadlines can be met without slaving your workers.

At the end of the day, legislation like this will make the labor market less competitive. But there's very few reasons to have labor be ridiculously competitive beyond excellence. If the labor market is left unregulated, people leverage their capacity to work more and be paid less, which makes for a shit society.

The alternative is rarely a reality because overhead costs are a concern for the contracted company. Youre right but its rarely the way things are done.

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Heh, for about 2 years, I worked 112 hours per week (for 6 weeks, and then got 3 weeks vacation).

Which should be wholly a choice, as in your case, Im sure it was.

[Underverse]

This is hilariously stupid. I get what they're trying to do, but some of us really do want to work weekends, because we love what we do.

[Reeve]

Which should be wholly a choice, as in your case, Im sure it was.

Sort of. I was broke and needed a job. This was the only place that was hiring for something more significant than restaurant work. Turned into a good career though.

[Daymanmb]

This is hilariously stupid. I get what they're trying to do, but some of us really do want to work weekends, because we love what we do.

They arent taking away the choice, are they? I thought theyre making it so that you dont have to work if you dont want to spend you weekends off working.. theres oxymoron in there somewhere..

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Sort of. I was broke and needed a job. This was the only place that was hiring for something more significant than restaurant work. Turned into a good career though.

Doing something similar myself, though not nearly as many hours or as frequently lol.

Were you the right candidate for the position? Should it have required that much effort to land security?

Edit: And how did you skirt the labour laws, working 100+ hours a week? I cant work more than 60 without getting written up...

[Reeve]

Doing something similar myself, though not nearly as many hours or as frequently lol.

Were you the right candidate for the position? Should it have required that much effort to land security?

Edit: And how did you skirt the labour laws, working 100+ hours a week? I cant work more than 60 without getting written up...

I was completely unqualified for the position. One of the VPs at the company knew me from some house parties, knew that I spoke Spanish (though not as well has he thought), could tell that I was smart and that I had a degree. So he hired me for something I knew nothing about, and sent me to work in South America and Africa.

As a FLSA Exempt employee (salaried), there aren't rules about how many hours I can work in the US, and overseas I was officially there on "business," not "work," so that didn't apply to me either. Typically because of the nature of the type of work we do, the company is able to secure waivers from traditional hourly maximums from the governments of the countries in which we work.

Honestly, it's really not all that bad. You live on site, wake up at 3:50 AM, start work at 4:15 AM, and work through until 8:15 PM every day until your hitch is over. It's rotational work.

[nextormento]

No, we can't. In the current oil industry market, we're lucky to have 3 projects going right now on razor thin margins.
And honestly, it's not "slaving your workers."

I mean... if you consider yourself to be in a good situation, more power to you. I've been subject to stressful deadlines, and I've subjected my workers to them. Always within the boundaries of regulation, of course. I can see why my wording being excessively antagonistic, but that was far from my intention.

I'm discussing the abstract of being competitive. A company whose bottomline depends on having working conditions below certain standards is not a company worth being left operating. Those standards are set by the state, not the labor market. When, and if, a business model is predicated on excessively exploiting their workers, it's time to let that business go. It may make clients to seek the product in foreign markets, so that's something to consider.

But this piece of legislation is not about forbidding mailing on weekends: it's about eliminating the possibility of retaliation if the worker decides not to do it. If a company needs that mailing exchange to stay afloat, I'm sure that they'll find workers willing to do it; maybe they'll need to up a tiny wee bit their salary.

[Steelangel]

Lol exploiting people and resources isnt human progress. You get "itchy" you say? Some mighty fine programming and life priorities your have there. Believe it or not, some people value family, friends, free time more than dolla dolla bill yo!

Pah! Family and friends are superfluous. While Europeans take their 5 month vacations in Corsica, I'm busy being productive.

[Noradin]

The idea that you can't send work emails after hours is silly. I would fully support making it illegal for companies to punish people (except specific positions) for not checking their emails during off hours, but to prevent them from being sent causes massive headaches.

That is exactly what the law is supposed to do.

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Doesn't work in a competitive marketplace. If I tell our clients that it's going to take 6-8 weeks to do their bid, they'll tell me to fuck off, because one of our competitors will submit a bid in the 3 weeks they need in order to hit their weather windows and budgets.

That is why you need laws like this that make it impossible for anyone to pull that much overtime.

[Mistame]

And France maintains the tie with Sweden on being Europe's Florida.