Word: labors
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Through Dawsey and his friends, we learn the story of the Germans' World War II occupation of the island, a bleak affair of starvation, humiliation and slave labor. We get to know a cast of scuffed, scarred Guernseyans who formed a book club as an alibi to keep their doings secret from curious Nazis. Where Bridget Jones' mascaraed eye might have turned away from such things (v. unpleasant!), Juliet's focuses in on the story of a fiercely independent, bona fide--quirky Guernseyan named Elizabeth McKenna, now missing, who had an affair, and eventually a child, with a German officer...
...Socialist government of the day. The measure was designed to stimulate job creation by cutting up the pie of available work into smaller pieces. Socialists claimed the creation of 350,000 new posts in its first five years; similar numbers were provided by independent economists and organizations monitoring labor activity. However, conservatives have consistently accused the law of shackling French businesses and undermining economic growth. They've also noted that state subsidies softening the impact of the reduced workweek on businesses have cost taxpayers billions. The new legislation, its backers say, will leave companies freer to demand more work from...
France's ruling conservatives are celebrating the mothballing of what they've long derided as the most destructive legacy of Socialist rule: the 35-hour workweek. Late Wednesday, a government text gutting the left's decade-old labor innovation was voted into law, provoking cheers from rightist politicians that France Inc. could now better fulfill one of President Nicolas Sarkozy's key campaign slogans: "work more to earn more...
...Companies will at last be able to operate management policy based on a secure legal framework," Danièle Giazzi, a labor specialist for the ruling Union for Popular Majority party (UMP). "It's a remarkable advance for the economy." France's Labor Minister, Xavier Bertrand, the bill's author, hailed an "historic" revision of a law conceived by the country's "archaic" left, now in opposition. "It's the end of the imposed 35-hour week," he crowed...
...fired if they refuse. They also expect businesses to stick to the lower-end 10% scale in paying for extra time, knowing that workers fearing for their jobs may not be able to stand up to their bosses for more money. That will be especially true in smaller companies, labor experts say, where staff organization and union representation don't match levels in bigger groups...