The French Counterstrike Against Work E-mail

On May 10th, the French government used a parliamentary maneuver to push through the El Khomri law, a series of measures that will reform the conditions under which French people work. The law has been tremendously unpopular. A poll taken in March found that seventy-one per cent of French citizens were opposed to it and thought that its provisions—allowing failing companies to fire employees, for example—would overwhelmingly benefit management, rather than workers. The opponents have expressed their spleen in numerous ways, occupying the Place de la République and clashing with police. (Last week, the French police staged their own demonstration, to which counter-protestors reacted by throwing a Molotov cocktail into an occupied police car.) Hidden in the bowels of this loi de merde, in a chapter entitled “The Adaptation of Work Rights to the Digital Era,” is Article 25, a lovable little proviso. It proposes a remedy to the problem of ever-dinging iPhones and bulging voice-mail boxes, dinnertime conference calls and 4 A.M. reply-alls. Voici, the most newfangled human right since the right to be forgotten: le droit de la déconnexion, or the right to disconnect.