Until September 2, half the country will be disconnected from work and business.
The long summer vacation – les grands vacances – just started in France. From July 14 (Bastille Day) to September 2, one citizen out of two will be disconnected from work or business ; one out of two will be out of town, if not out of the country. Some people will leave for one week or two, some others for three weeks or more. Many upper middle class or upper class families still stick to a traditional two months pattern : wifes and children start their vacation as early as possible in July, husbands join them for most of August. Middle class families focus on August. Youngsters nomadize on low budget lines throughout France, Europe and even more exotic places, from the Americas to East Asia. The ethnic French working class stays iddle at home or resort to camping. The immigrant working class flies back for Ramadan to the old country (usually North or Subsaharan Africa) where their French income turns them into rich visitors.
Foreigners may wonder how the French do it, especially when an economic tsunami is looming over all of Europe. For the French, however, this is even not an issue : vacation is as sacred to them as Yom Kippur to Jews. Woe to presidents or governmens that fail to understand that. Eight years ago, in 2004, the conservative prime minister Jean-Luc Raffarin attempted to abolish one legal holiday, Pentecost Monday, in May-June, a holiday-saturated season. The Catholic Church did not object (in religious terms, it is Pentecost Sunday only that matters). But the populace did. On the first « working Pentecost Monday », most employees, including civil servants, simply did not show up, and nobody in higher management dared to substract that illegally unworked day from the monthly check. It went on like that year after year ever since then. By now, Pentecost Monday, while not mentioned anymore in the calendar, has been fully restored as a national holiday for all practical matters.
In a similar way, Nicolas Sarkozy, the outgoing conservative president, blundered when he suggested, in 2007, that people should be allowed « to work more in order to earn more » : the proposal sounded decidedly obscene, and played as such an important role in mobilizing voters against him in 2012.
For centuries, the French worked hard. Peasants had toiled the land from time immemorial. Up to 1918, urban workers were supposed to spend ten hours a day at factories. Even entrepreneurs stayed at the office on Saturdays. Things changed a bit in 1936, the nearest thing to a social-democratic revolution France ever had, when the working week was limited to 40 hours and the working class was entittled, for the first time ever, to two weeks of paid vacation. However, the real break-up took place after WW2, when France – vindicating Mises and Hayek’s wildest predicaments – built up Europe’s most comprehensive and efficient Welfare State and crowned it with the Fifth Republic, a nationalistic and technocratic regime founded in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. While working class and middle class salaries were kept comparatively low, especially as compared to the United States, social benefits grew inordinately : vacation, in particular, was steadily extended, and working hours reduced.
As of today, French employees are entitled to six weeks of paid vacation per year, in addition to ten legal holidays and, in some occasion, conconmittant extended week-ends ; Civil Service workers (a category that encompasses all national or local government employees) are entittled to seven weeks. In addition, the legal working week is of 35 hours only : a statute introduced by the Lionel Jospin socialist cabinet in the early 2000’s, and piously maintained by the subsequent conservative administrations, in charge from 2002 to 2012. And here is the final stroke : in terms of school holidays, France is split in three completely arbitrary zones with different calendars (not to mention Corsica and the overseas territories). Since parents tend to adjust their own vacation time to their kids free time, companies with branches all over the country must deal with several different vacation peaks instead of just one.
As a result, French work and business life is a rapid and rather confusing succession of idle and overworked periods. It has been estimated that regular, reliable, work schedules can be sustained for five months out of twelve only : which means that the French economy must achieve in five months the best part of what most other advanced economies achieve in ten to eleven months. No wonder France’s work productivity is one of the highest in the world, either per capita or per hour, just behind the United States (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/icp/international-comparisons-of-productivity/2010—first-estimates/stb-icp-sep11.html ). No wonder either French companies have outsourced massively to less vacation oriented countries : France is #2 in FDI abroad, just after the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_FDI_abroad).
One set of French citizens is definitely not going to enjoy the present long vacation and is compelled instead to work day and night : the two hundred people or so who help the newly elected socialist president François Hollande and his senior ministers to finalize their new policies – and draw a budget. The whole package must be delivered by mid-August : shortly before the nation comes back from rest. And it looks very much like mission impossible.
Last June, six weeks after being elected president of France, Hollande won the parliamentary elections as well – by an amazingly large margin. The socialist party alone got 300 seats out of 577 : eleven seats beyond absolute majority. Together with the Green party (17 seats), the Left Front (10 seats) and a few microparties from the overseas territories, it even garners a sum total of 346 left-oriented seats and comes even rather close to a two thirds majority at the National Assembly. The right fell to 226 seats. The far right stormed two seats.
Under the Fifth Republic constitution, the president is either all-powerful with a devoted National Assembly or powerless without one. From now on and for the next five years, Hollande is thus all-powerful : a « monarchic » president, in the grand tradition of Charles de Gaulle. Moreover, he will enjoy complete subversience from the other elected and unelected powers, something de Gaulle could never fully achieve. As of today, the socialist party controls the Senate, Parliament’s Upper House, in addition to the National Assembly. It runs almost all régions (provinces) of France, most départements (counties), and most big cities, including the capital, Paris. Most French representatives at the European parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg are socialists too. And when it comes to the civil society, socialists and other leftwingers dominate – sometime to the point of suffocating them – the academic, mediatic and even religious powers.
For all that, there are too many pyrrhic elements in Hollande’s victory. First and foremost, it rests on shaky fondations in terms of electoral participation. 43 % of the voters abstained in the parliamentary ballot : a very high proportion by French standards. Then, victory depended in many instances on the immigrant or « culturally alien » vote, a worrying development, or on triangular ballots where the far right undercut the right. Thirdly, the more powerful and victorious Hollande may look by now, the more answerable he is going to be in case of error, failure or just shortcoming.
Clearly, Hollande and his closest advisors are aware of that. Their bid, so far, is to distance themselves from their quasi-utopian electoral platform and reconcile with the real world – in such a smooth and gradual and « honest » way that voters will not get angry.
To that effect, Hollande systematically « doubled » many of his cabinet ministers : while the radical Guyanese Christiane Taubira has been put in charge of the Ministry of Justice, the Spanish-born Manuel Valls, usually described as more rightwing than socialist, heads the Minister of the Interior (and of the Police) ; while Arnaud Montebourg, the leader of the socialist party’s left wing, runs a surrealistic new Ministry of Productive Recovery, Pierre Moscovici, as Minister of Economy and Finance, insists on the orthodox policies put forward by his mentor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, at IMF ; while Laurent Fabius, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, picked up an Arabist as chief of staff, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the Minister of Defense, is seen as staunchly pro-American and pro-Nato. But will the good guys actually prevail in the end of the day ?
We will have a clue when the long vacation is over.
Michel Gurfinkiel is the Founder and President of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, a conservative think-thank in France, and a Shillman/Ginsburg Fellow at Middle East Forum.
© Michel Gurfinkiel & PJMedia, 2012
http://www.michelgurfinkiel.com/articles/429-Frances-Long-Summer-Vacation.html
We have to be focussed on gov taxe in france, small business and big are taxed like hell! this is the real French cancer !… You run your own business and you know you have to pay $(towsend) on taxes! before any $$$$ won! that’s kill you!…Anyway, USA sink too! We have twice more dept than France/hab.!… Only way to save money by MASSIVE militaty cut(80%) but can bring a huge unemployement in US!. Cutting ALL social and health care for African and muzz in France could save $billions but only Marine L.P. have the bullets to do that, and don’t forget all muzz associations! no more cents for them!…Also, 5 weeks of vacation is really to much charge for business! Just my 0.02$!—– Sorry, but why we have to write in english? Here? I’am just little tired to speak english all time!
Provided your are fed up using your daily American English, just come back and enjoy our national messy future ? :o)
What a nice and thorough description of a country I got invited to quit, years ago.
Dual reasons : opportunity for work ; disillusions because most French citizens are deeply rooted in their “droits acquis”. In spite of a deeply changing world, they have lost further aptitude to adjust their mindset.
Sufferance will follow , most leftists will reject any sense of responsibilities they owe in this economic mess ! “C’est toujours la faute d’autrui” …
You live in US????? If yes, you like it?… Me, i dream to comme back in Alsace like it was in the 70s! with no muzz and business with small taxes!… If in US, the best time for me is in the 70s also! dream full size car like cadillac and Lincoln, good relation US-France at this time! almost everything was dream in this era!… Damn, i hate so much the post cold war era full of libtard shit!…Libtard baby-boomers destroy our civilisation from Seattle to prague since Clinton!
Bonjour l’alsacien, vous semblez regretter le temps heureux de v/jeunesse et d’époque encore (modérément) éduquée des ’70s?
Moi qui vit en Europe – mais ailleurs qu’en FR, et en atmosphère très internationale – je peux vous assurer que les transformations de la société post’68 sont perceptibles partout. Pire en Europe pour ce qui concerne l’idéologie “à la rose” ambiante en U.E. et le laxisme politicien de ces arrivistes qui règnent dans cette mosaïque !
Aujourd’hui, ce sont moins les élus qui gouvernent que les groupes (souvent minoritaires) d’activistes + ONG + les dogmatiques à l’état d’esprit quasi-sectes (verdâtres ou autres), et nombre d’ “artistes” du show-business pitoyables sur leurs écrans TV ou ciné. Soit une forme de dégénérescence sociétale sur laquelle beaucoup de ces “élus” plaqueront le terme de diversité/richesse culturelles.
Ayez donc à peine moins de regret aux USA qu’ici “au pays”.
Coude ïou pliiz leurn angliche bicôze ouatte you gaïze ar raïtinngueuh is foule ov mistéékse. Or are ïou douinngue zisse onn peurpeus?
Your English is absolutely awful. You both sound like an old friend of mine who now lives in Costa Rica (Zaraï). The message on his answering machine was always the same: “Aïe. Aïe’m not zèèèreuh. Pliiiz lîîve mi euh mêsséééddgge afteur ze bîîp”. I laugh my head off whenever I remember him years later. Thanks for the good laugh anyway, guys.
“No wonder France’s work productivity is one of the highest in the world, either per capita or per hour, just behind the United States ”
In fact, French people do not have a higher productivity than others. Companies just hire and keep people with the highest productivity : no young rookies (under 25 and with no experience), no people over 50 or even 45, if possible (many big companies do not say it officially, but internally forbid hiring them).
Try to do the same thing in other countries and the employees’ productivity will skyrocket. Of course, as in France, many people will stay un- or under-employed.
“Nicolas Sarkozy, the outgoing conservative president”
Conservative ?
“Manuel Valls, usually described as more rightwing than socialist”
More rightwing ?
Il think somebody missed something.
Or is it me?
Ah, les Français tiennent à leurs jours de congé ? Pourtant, lorsque je voyage à l’étranger, je ne rencontre que des allemands et hollandais à la pelle. Est-ce lié à mes destinations ou les Français sont-ils plus discrets ? 😉
The «culturally alien » vote, very good expression.
Hollande is not the true French voter’s president and he knows it.
That’s why he panders to “la richesse des banlieues” on every occasion.
Little does he know that this “richesse” will stop voting for the socialist party as soon as the muslims are strong enough to have their own candidates…
Bloody socialist idiots.
Moi pas comprendre. Dommage !
@Valérie ,
Je suis au Pérou et croyez moi il y passe beaucoup de français , jeunes et moins jeunes donc soyez sure que le français voyage beaucoup , peut etre discrétement mais il voyage , parmi eux un grand nombre d’enseignants . Par contre il se fait énormément remarquer par la façon qu’il a de critiquer , sa radinerie légendaire , surtout ici . Ce que je trouve grave c’est en parlant avec eux de politique , c’est qu’il n’ont pas une bonne vision du climat qui se profile à l’horizon dans notre beau pays . Des jours sombres sont à prévoir !!!
Bon courage à tous .
Valérie, les Français préfèrent les pays francophones et j’avoue avoir toujours évité mes compatriotes comme la peste.
Je me souviens au Pérou, dans un restaurant un couple de Français s’extasiant devant le sourire et l’amabilité du serveur. Heureusement pour eux, il ne comprenait pas l’espagnol et les termes utilisés par le personnel à leur encontre.Je me suis bien gardée d’intervenir échaudée à Singapour par un couple qui faisaient tourner en bourrique une pauvre vendeuse parce qu’elle ne comprenait pas ce qu’ils pensaient être de l’anglais. Voulant aider, j’ai dit à la vendeuse ce que ces gens souhaitaient : réaction : De quoi j’me mèle” .
Cela m’a servi de leçon, j’ai toujours laissé les Français se débrouiller et souvent se faire avoir de façon magistrale. Bien fait pour eux !