ACKKK! How did I MISS THIS?!

[saintsimon]

Just me being envious. It seems Europe, and France in particular, having the shortest work work on average in the EU,

I think I remember reading not too long ago, the French government wanted to change that and increase the amount of hours worked by the average French worker and bring it more in line with the rest of the world. And they responded by not picking up the garbage, again. They call that a general strike I think. Haven't heard anything else since.

 

You're confusing working hours per week and paid days off per year. The French Government wanted to change the first one.

 

The minimum of days off in the EU you can find in this two year old table.

 

An average German employee has 25 to 30 working days of paid vacation plus public holidays. Depending on your organizing skill, this amounts normally to between five to seven weeks of holidays per year. And you are expected to take that off, because otherwise your employer has to compensate you for days not taken off.

 

Regarding the distribution of holidays, this really depends on national traditions and climatic circumstances. Some countries have looong school summer holidays and short winter ones, while others have several school breaks distributed over the year.

 

The Federal Republic of Germany has 16 states and the states distribute their six-week summer school holiday between early June and early September, thus not the whole country is closed at once and not everybody clogs the autobahns at once. Additionally, there are several one- and two-week school holidays distributed throughout the year (fall, Christmas, Easter ...).

 

In other, more centralized countries like France and Italy, everybody is on holiday at in same months, plus it does not make sense to work hard in the Mediterranean heat in August - think pre-A/C tradititions.

 

Where does everyone?

 

That was a bad sentence, I should have corrected it. :embarrassed_smile:

What I wanted to express is this: in, let's say France or other countries similarly centralist government (without a federalist structure), the long summer school holidays start and end at the same time throughout the country. And workers or employees with families squeeze their holiday weeks into that time frame.

 

In the automotive industry, there's also the tradition of factory summer holidays. E.g. Volkswagen in Germany shuts down its factories in July. These summer breaks are used for retooling and maintenance.

Edited August 12, 2009 by saintsimon

[Ghost Plane]

I maintain it's a far more balanced and civilized way of living, than the current U.S. system of unofficial overtime and expecting email access to be maintained while trying to cram a year's worth of living into a week, IF you're lucky and even get vacation time.

[fcw]

Last time I was in France in August (1999!), I noticed that Paris had suspended all parking meters for the whole month. Do they still do that?