Word: seilli
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...public sector, on top of the 1% already awarded for this year. Private-sector employers are furious, saying the hike will set a national precedent when they can ill afford it. "If we increase pay without increasing productivity, we'll be destroying competitiveness and creating unemployment," griped Ernest-Antoine Seillière, head of the employers' federation. But unions say firms can afford raises, pointing to recent record profits from oil giant...
...durable jobs were created by the 35-hour week," says Marc Touati, chief economist for Natexis Banques Populaire. Yet there's no question that the May accession of 10 new countries with wages well below the E.U. average has accelerated the attack on the 35-hour week. Ernest-Antoine Seillière, president of Medef, France's employers' association, said the 35-hour week "is not just a slippery slope, it's a toboggan toward economic decline." If that's true, laborers are being forced off the sled. Bosch workers voted overwhelmingly to accept 12% cost savings at the factory...
...contrition, nor are the hawks at the Pentagon willing to offer absolution. France has reacted coolly to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's call that it forgive Iraq's state-to-state debt of some $1.7 billion. And there remains the delicate matter of the American consumer. Ernest-Antoine Seillière, president of the French employers' association medef, suggested last week that businesses shouldn't pay the price for politics. "Send telegrams to our consulates," he counseled angry American consumers. "But don't attack our perfumes, our yogurts and our airplanes." Guillaume Touton, a French-born wine importer...
That support has come at a price. Not only are reformists like Seillière cry-ing foul, but government spin control has at times been dizzying. Raffarin cabinet members have issued clashing policy pronouncements, forcing the Prime Minister to officiate and clear the air. Sometimes the government shows signs of wanting reform but lacking the stomach to go through with it. Last week, for example, after a junior minister provoked a storm by revealing job reductions planned for France's mammoth public school system, Education Minister Luc Ferry rushed to placate teachers' unions with assurances that only administrative posts...
...caution and crossed signals may finally be giving way to bolder action. Last week, a mere 48 hours after Seillière's outburst, Employment and Social Affairs Minister François Fillon announced a decree temporarily liberalizing employee overtime limits from the current 130 hours a year to 180. That falls short of the 200-hour permanent limit Seillière sought, but it represents a significant retreat from the 35-hour week instituted by Jospin. Then the government leaked its 2003 budget, which would reduce income taxes and employer-paid benefits but raise minimum wages and maintain...