Last month in a Versailles court, the former president of the radar division of Thomson-CSF SA was fined 50,000 French francs after being found guilty of the dastardly crime of letting employees put in too much overtime.
The company ran afoul of laws that make it illegal for anyone to work more than a 35-hour week. This, in a nutshell, is the French solution to the country’s nagging 11 percent jobless rate. Prevent people from working long hours, the thinking goes, and companies will have to hire more people to do the work.
The London Business School and Babson College recently studied entrepreneurial habits in 10 nations and concluded that not only is there a direct correlation between business start-up rates and economic growth, but also that the U.S. and Canada are leaving Europe in the dust.
There is no clearer distinction between the Old World and the New than attitudes toward work, security and risk-taking. America has its problems, to be sure, but shunning work and being afraid to take risks are not among them, and that shows up in the sparkling growth and low jobless rate of the U.S. economy.
Europe faces a profound challenge in trying to change its embedded risk-averse habits. But just imagine what a competitive force it might be if, for example, the French put as much effort and energy into creating jobs as they do into keeping workers from doing them.
