The idea of taking 10 weeks holiday a year sounds unreal to the average American worker. The French energy giant EDF, however, has tens of thousands of employees entitled to this perk. It wants 30,000 of them to scale back their vacations to a more modest 27 days and is offering to buy them out with a one-off €10,000 payment for lower-paid workers and a 4-6 per cent pay rise for managers.
In the words of EDF’s group strategy director Philippe Torrion: “We cannot be out of step with the world.” Many other French companies seem to have no problem with being out of step — and offer almost two months of holiday a year as standard.
Why? Well, French people — including French bosses — love holidays. Outside the tourism sector, it is often hard to find anyone working in a French office in August, or even for long periods in May — many workers took the chance last month to “bridge the gap” between the many public holidays