The widely reported rumors that France decided to ban employees from answering work emails after 6 p.m. are just that—rumors, reports Slate.com.
The flurry of misreporting and outrage over French labor practices began with an article published Wednesday in the Guardian. “Employers' federations and unions have signed a new, legally binding labour agreement that will require staff to switch off their phones after 6 p.m.,” it stated. “Under the deal, which affects a million employees in the technology and consultancy… employees will also have to resist the temptation to look at work-related material on their computers or smartphones.”
In actuality, this was a gross exaggeration—and it seems like the real details quite literally got lost in translation. The deal cited by the Guardian is not a formal law, nor did it affect a million employees. It did not even specify a time at which employees need to cease exchanging work emails. According to our colleagues at Slate.fr, the Guardian writer “seemed to have trouble distinguishing between French and Italian.”
Here’s what really happened. Last week, two groups of employers signed an agreement with French unions outlining certain workers’ “obligation to disconnect.” The agreement followed several months of negotiation and serves as an update to one from 1999 that established the 35-hour workweek, among other things.
This “obligation to disconnect,” a vague-sounding phrase if we’ve ever heard one, would apply not to the 1 million people the companies involved represent, but to the roughly 25 percent of independent workers they employ. Unlike typical workers, these “forfait jour” contractors have flexible hours and are not governed by the 35-hour workweek or 10-hour-day limit. So, unlike other workers, they can end up putting in extremely long days. They are not, as the Guardian piece angrily suggests, “sipping sancerre and contemplating at least the second half of a cinq à sept” before clocking out.
Read more of this report from Slate.com.
Read the original story in The Guardian that sparked the rumours here.