Finally - I've been meaning to write about this for awhile. Joelle (I have to get in the habit of calling Madame "Joelle" now since she finally told us to - a month after we got here!). Anyway, Joelle asked me last week how much vacation time Americans get. I told her I get 2.5 weeks to use as I please plus 10 government holidays. She was dumbfounded - the French get 5 weeks of vacation plus approximately the same holidays and she doesn't even think that's enough. So we got to talking about it. As it turns out, the current law states that the standard French work week is 35 hours, down from 39 a couple years ago. The reasoning behind the policy change was that companies could hire more employees and reduce unemployment if everyone just worked a little bit less. However, it didn't actually work out that way. According to my French History professor (we also talked about this in class), the upper-class are still working 39 hour weeks and then logging the extra four as comp time so that they end up with 8 weeks of vacation. The lower class are still working 39 hour weeks and only taking 5 vacation weeks because they can't afford to make less. The companies haven't hired more people either because there are all the other added expenses for each employee they hire (benefits, taxes, etc.). So unemployment has stayed about the same and Joelle still has to work 39 hours a week, but only gets paid for 35. She says what her company is doing is totally illegal, but there's nothing she can do about it.
The idea that there's nothing she can do surprises me because there's a strike in France every day (both according to my history prof and my own observation of the nightly news). It seems to be a favorite French pasttime. What's odd to me is that civil servants can strike - postal workers seem to be especially fond of doing so. We can't do that as government employees in the States. What's even more frightening though is that doctors and nurses here can, and do, strike. Yikes...
Back to the original point though - there's a totally different mentality here regarding work. The French love their quality of life. Don't get me wrong - many professionals here are putting in 60 and 70 hour weeks just like Americans do, but certain things are sacred. Stores close for lunch from 12-2 every day and hardly anything is open on Sundays. They wouldn't ask it of the workers to be there 7 days a week. Sometimes I'm amazed there are still cashiers at the supermarket during lunchtime - I wonder if they get paid overtime to work from 12-2.
My professor heard that the French rank fourth in productivity in the world in terms of output per person per hour. He wasn't sure who were the top three countries, but he knew that the French were more productive than the Japanese and attributed it to their better quality of life. One of Ethan's friends made a comment in her journal recently talking about how people in full-time jobs aren't productive during the entire 8-hour work day because they sit in meetings, take breaks, check e-mail, etc. She pointed out that people could work fewer, but more productive, hours and produce the same amount. So why not pay them the same amount based on output instead of time spent? I think that's sort of the setup Jerry has if I understand correctly. Last I checked, he was given a project and six weeks to complete it. They didn't care when he came to work or how he much he worked as long as he got it done by the due date. And if he finished early and got started on another one, better performance reviews for him. I understand that a lot of companies can't do that because people need to be present at the same time for meetings and whatnot, but shouldn't there be some way to adapt the concept? And don't we spend way too much time in meetings anyway?
I've often wondered what would happen if I asked to work part-time at NASA so I could spend the rest of my time focusing on other pursuits of happiness if you will. I could probably get just as much done due in large part to my "working better under pressure" tendency. But then, I had a co-worker in one of my previous co-op tours who only worked part-time at NASA and had another part-time job elsewhere. Great set-up in theory, except I never saw him doing any work when he was around. I got the impression that he wasn't given any team projects because it was assumed he wouldn't have the time to complete them or be around to coordinate with other people - and truly individual projects at NASA are few and far between.
Regardless of working better under pressure or being around at the right times, there's no denying that people are more productive when they are happier. Lenedra Carroll gives an example in one of my favorite books, "The Architecture of All Abundance", of an employee of hers who was not doing well in his personal life and, therefore, not performing well at work. She told him to take as much time off as he needed to sort things out - paid leave. As I recall, he ended up taking six months off, but when he came back, he was able to complete projects in six weeks that normally would have taken at least six months and she considered it a good investment. She not only had a more productive employee, but a happier one as well. I think as Americans, we often forget about the relationship between quality of life and productivity. There seems to be this idea that if you're working longer hours or under more stress that you must be more important to your company or you've martyred yourself for your career and earned some kind of honor. How did anyone ever decide that the work week should be 40 hours anyway?
