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July 20, 2004
Election at Bosch
This morning, I caught a few minutes of TV news, France 2. It seems the workers at some plant belonging to Bosch voted 98% in favor of a plan to extend the work week from 35 to 36 hours, without pay hikes. (According to my records using Hours for Palm OS, I worked 94:35 from June 30 to July 13, or 47:17:30 per week, not counting breaks, lunch, running, and so forth. I work in France, home of the 35-hour work week.)
The reporter made this sound like the wave of the future at a time when Raffarin's government under Chirac's orders wants to introduce more flexibility into the apparently overly rigid branch agreements around the 35-hour work week. The head of Human Resources at the Bosch plant claimed the vote was a big victory.
As an aside, perhaps for balance, the reporter explained the terms. Employees voting against the measure knew they would be laid off. (18 accepted that.) Had the measure not been adopted as suggested, Bosch would've delocalized to the Czech Republic where wages are lower, and closed the plant. In return for the vote of confidence, the management has agreed to keep the site open for a while and to look into ways of perhaps keeping it open longer. (Gee, I can think of one. How about working an additional day a week with no pay increase?)
Looks like a harbinger of what to expect in other branches. Need to learn to be even more flexible. That goes along with the ending to another reportage, according to which Turkey has a lot to offer, making the nation a great candidate for entry into the European Union. (The work week mentioned there lasts 45 hours.) According to the reporter doing that story on France 2, high unemployment in Turkey is offset by the growth rate that reached 10% last year.
Sounds wonderful... for professional investors and their wealthy clients. Surely the majority of the 82% of French voters who elected Chirac in the 2002 presidential election belong to one of those two groups.
Posted by Mark at July 20, 2004 09:10 PM