I know this behaviour from big corporations is not exclusive to French companies but my type of work allows me to work from home and I’ve never seen a company despise WFH so much than my once French employer.

This was before the pandemic and I had the habit of working from home with my previous employer when I was sick. When I changed employer to work for a French hosting company in Montreal, they were adamantly against WFH. Even if sick. They preferred that you missed a day (or two, you know, take your time to recover!1!!) from work, without pay, than letting anyone from the lower ranks WFH. This was a pretty big red flag for me. Anyway their work culture was pretty toxic and I ended up quitting after a few months, but the “no work from home even if sick” policy is the first thing that hit me when I started there.

My current employer allows me to WFH and I’ve been looking a bit around to see if I could find something else, but they mostly all seem to require some sort of hybrid schedules at the office now, which obviously sucks.

My experience with French companies is that they never even work. The French take so much vacation time off you can hardly get anything done. They are regularly out worked by just about every other country on the face of the Earth.

They have the same mandated 4 weeks paid vacation as the rest of the EU. National holidays seems to be 11, which is similar to germany.

I do have the impression of france workers going on a strike a lot though, maybe thats what you mean. If you are from the us, i can see how 4 weeks vacation can seem like a lot, you dont have the benefit of having decent employee protections

No there’s more to it than that. We have 3 weeks of vacation here in the U.S. and don’t have any problems getting things done.

The US has no federal requirement to pay for unworked hours, be they sick or holiday time off work. This is why your people are depressed and seeking answers guidance from opiods and fascists.