The French in no hurry to return to workplace

After bringing everything to a screeching halt in an all-out war against the coronavirus, French President Emmanuel Macron wants to get the economy going again. The dark draconian days of the Covid-19 lockdown are over, confirmed cases have continued to fall, and June 22 marks a new roll-back of stay-at-home curbs as cinemas, museums and more schools reopen.
To do so, he’s harking back to themes from his 2017 presidential campaign as a pro-jobs candidate who would be judged on his ability to shake up the country’s rigid labor market and complex pensions system.”France must fully get back to work,” he said in a national televised speech on June 14. “We must work, and produce, more.”
These challenges aren’t unique to France, or Europe, but few other countries had seen an exhausting cycle of social unrest and anti-government protests in the period leading up to the virus, which contributed to Macron’s approval rating stagnating at 38%. Labour unions pounced on his words after his TV speech, accusing him of wanting to make up for lost economic time by forcing people to work longer — exactly what fueled protests against his now-suspended attempt at pension reform. Newspaper Liberation superimposed Macron’s features onto the head of Nicolas Sarkozy, a center-right predecessor whose mantra in 2007 was: “Work more to earn more.”
It’s hard to rally the troops after creating a world without work. The sudden return of the office in people’s minds is triggering stress: Some 42% of workers are in psychological distress, workplace
consultancy Empreinte Humaine estimates. While not always unwarranted, every excuse for not returning to work is being given, from childcare burdens to the fear of taking public transport again, and doctors report a steady flow of people asking for sick leave.
It’s no wonder Macron made school mandatory again: As of June, 40% of teachers were not in the classroom, with remote teaching adding to parents’ logistical nightmares. Some white-collar workers paid to stay at home have gotten comfortable with this
new parallel reality. “At first, I felt guilty for not working,” one furloughed staffer told me. “Then it went away.”
In an ideal world, reopening the economy would bring all of these workers back online. But the French economy still bears the scars of one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns, which crushed the tourism industry and gummed up factory production and supply chains. According to pollster Ifop, the population was divided neatly into three: 34% working on the front lines (from medical professionals to grocery store employees), 30% working from home, and 36% not working at all. It’s the latter that represent the biggest policy challenge.
To avoid mass layoffs, the Macron administration — rightly — rolled out one of the most generous furlough schemes in Europe, with the state taking on the payment of as much as 80% of gross wages.

—Bloomberg