July 15, 2004
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR:
Business hits at Chirac for not reforming 35-hour week (Jo Johnson, July 16 2004, Financial Times)
Business leaders in France criticised Jacques Chirac yesterday for taking a timid and incoherent approach to reforming the 35-hour working week after the French president ruled out revoking the law that introduced the controversial measure.Mr Chirac announced in his annual Bastille Day television interview on Wednesday that he did not seek to change the popular law. Saying the "legal working time is and will remain 35 hours", he called for companies to be given "more freedom to adapt to the market".
At the same time, however, he accused companies such as Robert Bosch, the German car parts group that is asking some of its French workers to agree to amend their contracts or risk seeing jobs move to the Czech Republic, of putting France on a "slippery slope".
Isn't Chirac French for "timid and incoherent"? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 15, 2004 10:29 PM
Chirac is a politician, and not a courageous one. The 35-hour week will end, but not until the country has experienced a lot more pain. When it happens, it will probably be through a series of exemptions, bit by bit. As long as Socialists are part of the power structure, their pet theories will dominate the reality of what these laws are doing to the country. Sadly for France, Chirac is smart enough to know what real damage is being done.
Posted by: Dave Sheridan at July 16, 2004 6:39 AMSome folks think that France is over due (and ripe) for another revolution.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at July 16, 2004 9:41 AMNo, "French" is French for timid and incoherent.
Posted by: MarkD at July 16, 2004 8:32 PM"Isn't Chirac French for "timid and incoherent"?"
No, that is a mis-translation. Chirac is the French term for a senile, corrupt, anti-Semitic, anti-American, jackass.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 17, 2004 1:30 AM