Word: french
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...Thursday as government officials sought to explain how the 35-hour week would remain the legal reference despite draft legislation that would effectively allow companies to make their own rules on overtime. The draft being prepared by Employment Minister Xavier Betrand ignores existing agreements on between unions and French business organizations on overtime and its remuneration, leaving it to individual employers to define working hours - a move the unions decry as making employees vulnerable to bullying by their bosses...
...government is, in reality, organizing the end of the 35-hour week," charged Fran?ois Chereque, head of the nation's largest union, Democratic Confederacy of French Labor, in Le Monde. "It's an affront, or a challenge. In any case, it's a provocation...
...Most members of France's ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) agree, and have called for the statue to be struck from the books to give companies freedom to work longer hours at lower cost. Earlier in May, UMP president Patrick Devedjian expressed the longing of virtually all French conservatives by "forcefully requesting the definitive dismantlement of the 35-hour week". But in the face of ferocious reaction by labor leaders to that appeal and the applause it drew from UMP members, other conservatives were forced to quash the very suggestion. Indeed, given the political explosiveness of the topic...
...prize at Cannes, the Palme d'Or, went for the first time in 21 years to a French film: Laurent Cantet's Entre les Murs (The Class), which traces a year in a Paris junior-high class. This judicious, quietly touching film was made with nonprofessional actors, including the teacher, François Bégaudeau, on whose memoir-novel the film is based. When the unanimous award was announced, Cantet, Bégaudeau and the rainbow coalition of kids all swarmed onstage for an ecstatic reunion...
Modern agribusiness owes a debt to J.R. Simplot, who left home at age 14 and went on to dominate the American potato business. He supplied U.S. troops with dried food during World War II and sold French fries to fast-food chains, but the Idaho native also invested in cattle, fertilizer plants and timber--not to mention computer-chip pioneer Micron Technology. The oldest billionaire in the world last year, according to Forbes, Simplot remained ambitious--and proud--driving around Boise in a white Lincoln Town Car with mr. spud vanity plates...