We recently posted on Le Parti Socialiste being a party of no ideas. To date its most distinctive platform plank is that the PS is not the opposition, scil., L'UMP or the Front National.

Then -- POP -- there's PS deputy Ségolène Royal having a go at policy-making, though not PS policy to be sure.

And here she is again, criticizing the 35-hour work week!

ROYAL DARES TO QUESTION 35-HOUR WORK WEEK

PARIS June 5, 2006 (AFP) - France's Ségolène Royal — the Socialist presidential frontrunner who sent sparks flying by calling for army training for young offenders — has violated another left-wing taboo by attacking the 35-hour working week.

The 35-hour work week ("35HW") assumes that production is a fixed term. Let's assume that 100 widgets is a typical week's production for a typical French widget business. To produce these 100 widgets requires 100 units of widget production time by the number of optimum widget hires, let's say 100 widget workers to keep the arithmetic sailing along. So each widget worker works 1 unit of widget production time per week, let's say 40 hours, to produce 1 widget. If you restrict a widget worker's unit of widget production time to 35 hours, the 35HW theory postulates that you will need to hire 12½ more widget workers to produce your 100 weekly widgets. Were France, with an unemployment rate of 9-10%, a nation wholly devoted to widget production, the 35HW theoretically results in full employment (100%) with a ~2-3% labor deficit. All very simple.

Except for inefficiencies of processing new hires to make up the articial shortfall, the additional 12.5% in workers benefits passed on in costs, the fracturing and circumscribing of production, the added demands on a business's administration and physical plant, and the deathlock of France's employment-for-life labor law. There is also the possiblity the French widget business opts not to make any additional hires and instead pushes its deliveries forward by a fractional day, in effect producing fewer widgets per annum and reducing its revenues, which reduces the French PIB (produit intérieur brut, scil. GDP).

In a text published on her website [Désirs d'avenir (Wishes For The Future), an interactive book in progress], Royal says the 35-hour week introduced by a Socialist government in 2002 has had "mixed results for the quality of working life" — the main argument put forward at the time for its adoption.

Perhaps this marshmallow hammerblow is daring if you are a French socialist or a latterday Colbertiste, but the folly of fixed-production schemes such as the 35HW has been in evidence since the Physiocrats.

Scroll down on Mme. Royal's wish book and you will find L’exemple… américain, wherein American industry is commended [!] for its administrative transparency and investments in worker health and safety:

En quelques années, les accidents et maladies du travail ont été réduits de plus du tiers dans le secteur privé. La satisfaction au travail a augmenté. Les questions de santé et de sécurité ont été davantage intégrées aux investissements, les configurations de travail nocives ont souvent été revues et, au bout du compte, la productivité s’en est trouvée améliorée.

Que nous enseigne ce cercle vertueux qui doit plus à l’intérêt bien compris qu’à la philanthropie ? Qu’on peut améliorer en même temps la santé des travailleurs et celle des entreprises. Que les organisations innovantes de travail ne sont pas néfastes pour les salariés à condition que les employeurs s’investissent et investissent dans l’amélioration des conditions de travail. Qu’il est possible de renverser la tendance en passant d’un déséquilibre négatif (faibles investissements dans la santé et la sécurité/fort coût des accidents et maladies professionnelles) à un équilibre profitable à tous (prévention efficace/maîtrise des coûts).

Mme. Royal concludes:

The profit for the American economy deserves to be pointed out: 1% of GDP (gross domestic product) is the equivalent of the cost... of the war in Iraq.

Hhmmm. Conscription? A boosted economy underwriting military might? Hhmmm. Just what has Mme. Royal up her sleeve?

Stay tuned.

PFFT (What is this?): Becoming the opposition 1½ | Something new 2 | Imminent annexation of Andorra 0-2 | Rayonnement français 0

She has also upset fellow Socialists by confessing to an admiration for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, seen as heresy by most of the French left.

Well, let’s not forget that Merkel won in Germany with a somewhat similar strategy….involving the US/German relations.

But it warned that having now bound herself to the manifesto, Royal will find her room for manoeuvre increasingly confined.

This is just what you had mentioned earlier, about the “fluff” articles on her, and the fact the articles did not really mention any specifics. Now she will have to stick with the platform. Perhaps the PS did not want her to get those not so leftist ideas very popular anyway!