You'd have to check the posts under TMR's "France" tag, but (I think) I've mentioned before that, while living in France, I once watched 9 guys dig a hole. Or rather, one guy dug, another "supervised" his work, and the rest smoked, joked, and tried to look fashionable enough to compete with the police for the lady's attentions. So - and since I remember that so-called "work crew" also only brought one shovel for the job - this has the ring of truth:
PARIS (Reuters) - The CEO of a U.S. tire maker has delivered a crushing summary of how some outsiders view France's work ethic in a letter saying he would have to be stupid to take over a factory whose staff only put in three hours work a day.
Titan International's Maurice Taylor, nicknamed "The Grizz" for his negotiating style, told the left-wing French industry minister in a letter published by media on Wednesday that he had no interest in rescuing a plant set for closure.
"The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three," Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.
"I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!" Taylor added in the letter, which was posted by business daily Les Echos on its website and which the ministry confirmed was genuine.
"Titan is going to buy a Chinese tire company or an Indian one, pay less than one Euro per hour wage and ship all the tires France needs," he said. "You can keep the so-called workers."
The French like to tell themselves we "Americans live to work, while the French work to live", but, when they do so, they always overlook two things:
1) Sure, Americans like to work - we're the shit, and making stuff and accomplishing things is fun.
2) People who talk to themselves, instead, are crazy,...
Having been an American worker for a fair amount of my life, I'd say: yep. American workers are for the most part, still as hard working as they ever were -- what a lot of them do balk at is this new trend towards learning the "mindset, the lifestyle" crap coming out of corporate.
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't fly -- American workers like to do their job and then go home, they even like to do their jobs well if given the proper incentives...but this "we're a corporate family, blah,blah, blah" does not fly (especially when it favors lazy jackasses who go all out to "live the lifestyle" at the expense of good, hard workers"). Thus, unmotivated American workers who are going to be stubborn in the unmotivation.
Have them compete directly with another company's workers, give them an actual goal to shoot for, acknowledge and benefit good work, they'll band up and knock it out -- but give them some freedom of movement, let them do it their way...they'll still the best freaking workers out there.
At least that's what I've seen in my experience...I can't understand why this is such a hard thing for people to not see (I realize that this could be a big problem if one would rather have passive little drones -- but eventually those will turn into...French workers). And I hate to see people trying to turn Americans into that -- not our style, like fitting a square peg into a round hole.
PW