Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon It has taken France – at long last – to realise Oscar Wilde’s famous parody of a dreary Victorian homily. Wilde turned the phrase around and made it: “Work i s the curse of the drinking classes.”
What French bureaucracy is now doing is realising controversial legislation that will reduce the French working week from 39 to 35 hours. With this legislation only pending, French officials have started clamping down on the 39-hour curfew, already in place. They are now making sure that business executives and other professionals are not putting in more than the current legal limit.
More than 400 shock-troop inspectors from the French Department of Employment and Solidarity have been mounting surprise raids on late-working upper-level employees in a number of big companies. In one bizarre instance, senior engineers and executives, working late to conclude a key contract for a giant telecommunications corporation suddenly found their offices invaded by “job police” demanding to know why they were still functional at 7pm.
The fines for breaking the rules are extremely severe – as much as R400 000 per individual executive found guilty of burning the early evening oil. The inspectors have been known to monitor personal computers to ensure that no work is being sneaked home. Number- plates of suspiciously late cars in company car parks are secretly photographed. A leading defence- electronics group has agreed, under pressure, to close its corporate offices by 7pm every day.
One guess where the tip-offs are coming from. That’s right, the good old trade unionists who apparently don’t like the idea of the white-collar parasites stealing a march on the honourable labour force by working overtime for no other reward than the satisfaction of duty done.
All this fraternal activity in the labour playground is the result of the recent success of a draft Bill in the French Parliament and which, by the year 2000, will curtail the legal working week. A victory for the socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin.
Why, one wonders, has South Africa not yet picked up on this progressive idea. It is high time that working too hard or too long was turned into a crime.
Nipping all this unpaid executive overkill in the bud is just what the South African economy needs.
Besides which, night-prowling business executives shouldn’t be allowed to use up all the company coffee, wear out the lavatories and waste employee- electricity simply on the grounds that they are doing the company a great big free favour. More than likely they are in the office after hours for no other reason than that they can dream up new ways to oppress the real workers down on the factory floor.
As the new and the precedent South African governments have long since proved, there is nothing like loads of leisure time to keep the wheels of the economy oiled, balanced and whirling.
The plethora of South African public holidays bears this out. Not only a plethora of official days off, but strategically placed on the calendar to ensure that two consecutive long weekends can easily be turned into a 13-day break without any unlawful use of statutory full-pay sick leave.
What is even more inspiring is the new technique that makes sure that, in the event of a “date-critical” public holiday falling over a weekend, the obligatory 24-hours off-duty is moved to the Monday. On these lucky occasions, previously dis-vacationed workers get one day to celebrate democracy and an extra one to sleep it off.
The creators of the captivating labour legislation which at present is turning the South African socialist dream into reality should set themselves to their tasks afresh. Never mind the Employment Equity Bill and affirmative action, what we now need is a working-hours equality Bill. They could call it something affectionate like the Love’s Labours Lost Bill or The Seven O’Clock Itch Law.
Whatever, it is long overdue. While they’re at it, they could also officially move Christmas close-down mode a month or so earlier.
At present most businesses start plunging into this hibernative state around the end of September. That’s when the friendly merchants haul their array of plastic Santas out of storage and start plastering them to the windows.
It’s also the date when “I’m-sorry-we- can’t-see-to-that-because-the-factory-
won’t-deliver-stocks-until-after-the-
Christmas-and-New-Year-break” becomes the catch-phrase in answer to any inquiry.
And as for all the administrative free- loaders who insist on pitching up for work at dawn. Well, they know what they can do.