November 27, 2014
Of course it had no evidence, but hey, if you don’t like the 35-hour work week, who needs evidence. The comment came in an article discussing the debate over changing the 35-hour work week, which requires that employers pay an overtime premium for additional hours.
The piece told readers:
“The law has not improved an unemployment rate that, at 10.2 percent, hovers near a high.”
It would be fascinating to know how the NYT reached this conclusion. If people worked more hours, and the unemployment rate remained the same, the implication is that considerably more goods and services would be produced. (If the average workweek increased by just one hour, and there was no decline in productivity, it would imply a 2.9 percent increase in output.)
Incredibly, this piece only presents assertions from experts who claim that France is suffering from the short workweek, although it did make a passengers’ assistant at Orly airport, into an expert, telling readers:
“For wage earners like Ms. Ahlem, political resistance to change seems out of touch with economic reality.” It then quotes her as saying that the laws should be encouraging people to work, which of course ignores the fact that France is suffering from a lack of demand, not a lack of people who want to work. (See, unemployment means people want to work but can’t find jobs.) It’s not clear that Ms. Ahlem is typical of most wage earners in thinking that people don’t want to work — even if the NYT assures us that she is.
The piece also includes the bizarre complaint that the short work week has made France too productive:
“But in reality, France’s 35-hour week has become largely symbolic, as employees across the country pull longer hours and work more intensely, with productivity per hour about 13 percent higher than the eurozone average.”
Economists attach enormous importance to productivity. If the short workweek has helped to make the productivity of French workers 13 percent higher than the euro zone average this would be a strong argument in its favor.
In short, this is a very confused article. The NYT obviously doesn’t like to see workers putting in short workweeks. But if it wants to maintain its status as a serious newspaper it should get its argument straight and move it to the opinion page.
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