Prime Minister François Bayrou has put the cat among the many pigeons in promising to chop two of France’s nationwide holidays in an effort to rescue the nation’s funds.
Predictably sufficient, his proposal on Tuesday to axe the Easter Monday and eight Might holidays triggered howls of protest from the left and the populist proper – together with his personal centrists and the conservative proper expressing at finest guarded assist.
In a rustic with such a powerful custom of employee protest, the sudden removing of two statutory days off was by no means going to be a simple promote.
Primarily, women and men could be made to work two further days a yr for no improve in wage. The achieve in productiveness would assist pull the nation out of its ever-deepening gap of debt.
The French are certainly very connected to their jours fériés.
The month of Might is awaited with glee yearly, not simply because it heralds spring – but additionally due to the succession of lengthy weekends that frequently happen.
If 1 Might (Employees’ Day) and eight Might, marking the top of World Conflict Two, fall on a Tuesday or Thursday, then the weekends turn into four-day treats as a result of the Monday and the Friday will mechanically be taken as vacation too.
On prime of that there’s Ascension (at all times a Thursday) plus Easter Monday and Whit Monday (or Pentecost).
If the Church calendar obliges, an early Easter can mix with 1 or 8 Might to supply not only a pont or bridge – which means a four-day weekend spanning a Monday or Friday, however a veritable 5 or six-day viaduc (viaduct).
November is one other feast of feasts, with All Saints’ on the primary of the month and Armistice on the eleventh providing reduction from autumn blues. And on prime of that, there are the well-known “RTT” days, which many get in return for working greater than the authorized 35 hours per week.
However earlier than we lapse into humorous self-satisfaction about “these extremely lazy French and their God-given proper to infinite downtime”, we’d like to remember a few different concerns.
First, removed from the favored picture, the French even have fewer nationwide holidays than the European common.
France has 11, like Germany, the Netherlands and US.
Slovakia has probably the most, with 15, and England, Wales, and the Netherlands have the fewest, with 8.
Eire and Denmark have 10.
Second, in response to the UK’s Workplace for Nationwide Statistics, French productiveness (output per employee) is eighteen% increased than the UK’s, So any gloating about holidays from throughout the Channel is misplaced.
Third, this isn’t the primary time in recent times that France has proposed to axe nationwide holidays. It has occurred earlier than – and labored (form of).
In 2003, the conservative authorities beneath President Jacques Chirac needed to do one thing radical after the lethal heatwave of that summer time which killed 15,000 folks.
So Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin determined to show Whit Monday right into a Day of Solidarity. Individuals would work as a substitute of taking the day without work, and the cash gained by employers could be paid to the federal government for a fund to assist the aged and disabled.
There was an outcry, and some years later the change was watered down in order that now the Day of Solidarity is voluntary. It’s all extremely complicated, and no-one actually understands the way it capabilities, however non-Whit Monday nonetheless generates €3bn (£2.6bn; $3.5bn) yearly in receipts.
One other precedent goes again to the Nineteen Fifties and Charles de Gaulle.
Newly appointed as president, in 1959 he axed the 8 Might Victory in Europe vacation, saying the nation couldn’t afford it. It was reinstated in 1981 by the Socialist François Mitterrand.
Bayrou looks to scrap two holidays in bold bid to cut debt
So when on Tuesday the Greens accused Bayrou of making an attempt to “wipe from the collective reminiscence the eradication of Nazism”, it was fairly straightforward for minister Benjamin Haddad to retort: “Really, it was De Gaulle who first did this, and I appear to recall he performed a sure function in eradicating Nazism.”
None of because of this Bayrou is any the extra more likely to see his proposals turn into actual.
The reality is that the prime minister is able of just about whole impotence – working a authorities with no majority in parliament, which may fall at any minute if the opposition teams so resolve.
However, in an odd means, this very powerlessness has given Bayrou the liberty to say what he thinks.
If there’s little probability of his funds proposals getting voted by means of the Meeting – and the probabilities are nearly zero – then he would possibly as effectively give the French the unsugared reality.
The financial scenario is dire, he stated.
Each second that passes, France has €5,000 extra debt.
At this time it stands at €3.3tn. In these circumstances, Bayrou believes perhaps we have to re-think the way in which we dwell. And work.
