New respect for France.Follow

I have a new respect for France now. After reading a U.S. News and World report article this month, and learning that workers in France are guaranteed 5 weeks of vacation and 12 paid holidays each year.

If only I could get over the fact that I only like the language when I hear women speak it...I'd think about moving there.

When did you have old respect and what caused you to lose that?

Napoleanic Era and Russia, respectively.

I'm pretty sure they have met their quota of unemployable foreigners.

Darn Brits take too much vacation time!

I get 33 days + 7 statutory Holidays on full pay. In addition, I can add up to 25 days study leave on full pay and 20 on half pay.

I gather from previous discussions that US employers aren't quite so generous

Damn unions.

I get no paid vacation, but then I don't really need to get paid when I'm vacation...at least that's their opinion... , no paid holidays either, but I'm ok with that for now. Once I have my degree, I'm going for something awesome.

But at least I can take it when I want...sort of.

I almost had a heart-attack when I saw this thread. A Republican praising France?! Because we do fUck all at work?

You starting to sound like a Democrat, or worse, a European Commy


On the bright side, there is an American school in Paris, and it's very good.

The 5 weeks paid vacation (that you have to take by law, or otherwise you get it paid to you), is nice.

Add the numerous bank holidays we get during the year (half of May is a Bank Holiday).

And then the 35-hour week.

It's insane.

One of my best friend's brother works for HSBC in Paris. He works, roughly, 70 hours a week. And, thanks to the 35-hour week, he gets a couple of months of holiday in the summer.

It's all quite insane.

I know I'm feeding ammunition to gbaji, but that's not the worst of it. Just to give you an exemple of how trade unions, and especially public service trade unions work in France:

We have train drivers. These train drivers have, possibly, the cushiest job in the job: They drive the TGV (fastest commercial trains in the world, except maybe Japan), sit on their asses, and watch the scenery go by. Seriously, with all the technology inside those train, driving them is like sitting on a chair for 3 hours and picking your nose.

But... A long time ago, back when trains used coals, being a train driver was a horrible job. It required breathing coal fume all day long, and shoving it into the coal burner. Because of that, train drivers had a large yearly "bonus", and retired at 50, a couple of years before they died of lung diseases. They also had a very generous pension scheme, which they never touched since they died so early. A bit like miners.

Well, all these provisions still exist today for train drivers. They get a huge yearly bonus. They have the most generous pension scheme in the public sector. They retire, still, at 50. All of those provisions that existed for coal-train drivers still exist for TGV drivers.

Now, lots of people are midly amused by this in France. Earn $30,000 a year for sitting on your ***, and retire at 50 after a few 35-hour weeks.

But when the government tries to change those provisions, then the famous "solidarity" concept comes into play, and every union member of the public sector is protesting in the street: Nurses, teachers, public transport workers, street cleaners, everyone. And the government backs down in the face of mass protests, and it all stays the same.

Insane.

Having said that, being a train driver in France rocks.

Every cloud...

21 vacation, 5 sick.

Slinging sandwiches isn't so bad.













'course the salary could be better.

I will have to visit France now...but I think I'll avoid the major cities, mostly because I've heard that the people are far friendlier in the rest of the country.

It's true to an extent.

But you can't go to France without seeing Paris, we've hung tourists for less than that.

That's not hard to do. For all our prattle about "family values" in this country, we're pretty much dead last among industrialized nations with regards to our policies for family accomodation.

From MomsRising.org



So far, California is the only state that mandates paid maternity leave, and I think that's only a few weeks. Washington State is about to join them. Mr. Ambrya and I are lucky--he actually gets three weeks of paid family leave, though that came about mostly due to a bookkeeping error in which the company had to find SOMETHING to do with a fund set aside for interim-disability pay (to fill in the few weeks between the time an accident happens and the time disability kicks in) when it changed hands.