News from France: No More Night Shift

Hot on the heels of our blog on the 6-hour working day in Sweden (“Because I’m Happy”) come overnight reports that France is banning work after 6pm.

France already champions the 35-hour working week, and now a new deal struck between an employer’s federation and unions will see employees of technology and consulting businesses forbidden from checking their phones or computers for work reasons outside normal office hours (which for many employees, means before 9am and after 6pm).

The agreement has been reached to counter increased concerns over erosion of work-life balance, which unions fear is having a detrimental effect on workers’ health and safety.

The ban is reported to affect between 250,000 and 1 million French workers (estimates vary between sources, depending upon how much drama needs to be injected into the article) - including those working for Google and Facebook, as well as Deloitte and PwC.

In a globalised economy, it will be interesting to see how this works in practice.