[ExI] france again

[Amara Graps]

Spike:

>http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/30/france.lunches.reut/index.html

>Are there Europeans here who can comment?

In the article:
"Salomon is not paid overtime, even though he usually works from 9 a.m.
to 7 p.m., with an hour for lunch. Instead, he gets extra vacation --
which adds up to so many days off it is hard to find time to work."

And true also for the public sectors in Italy. How else do you think
that I acquired 250 hours of "extra" vacation time (on top of the 4
weeks standard every year) in the first two years that I was in Italy?

>If this is true, not a gross
>exaggeration, I am so amazed.  35 hour work week?  How do they get anything
>done in that much time?

Less than 40 hours work week is common throughout Europe. Italy is
officially 36.5 in the public sectors, the work week is about 37 hours
in Germany, and I think that 4-day work weeks (every other week? not
sure of the details) are typical in the Netherlands. You'll find pockets
of people that work more (scientists, for example).

You've heard me say before this, I think:

Americans live to work
Europeans work to live

I might be able to dig up an Economist article I read a couple of years
ago that described the differences in productivity on the two continents.
Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans.

Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA
Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson