Through decades of effort by labor unions and activists, retail workers in France earned the right to a day of rest on Sundays. Stores remained closed, and employees stayed home. But recent developments increasingly encroach on those days of rest, suggesting that closures on Sunday may soon become a thing of the past.
To start, the national government allowed retailers to remain open until 1:00 p.m., but workers still knew they could go home for at least a half-day. Still, competitive pressures and international differences have prompted several retail chains to seek ways to get around even these more lenient limitations. For example, Groupe Casino, the largest grocery retailer in France, has installed self-checkout machines in many of its stores. After all the employees go home on Sundays, the doors remain open for shoppers who are willing to scan their own products to complete their purchases.
Groupe Casino notes that it has little choice. Online retailers such as Amazon encourage consumers to believe they should be able to obtain the products they need at any time, so remaining closed every Sunday would put it in an impossible competitive position. Furthermore, it has stores in other nations that do not limit work hours, so opening every day everywhere makes its operations more consistent.
For consumers, the experiment appears appealing: Groupe Casino has reported that thousands of shoppers show up on Sunday afternoons, and the revenues are sufficient to keep the doors open. Thus this technology reliance appears likely to spread, both to more Groupe Casino stores and to other retail chains with a substantial presence in France.
However, another group of people are less pleased with the implications. Checkout staff and in-store employees express great concern about their potential job losses. Once consumers become accustomed to self-checkout technology, there appear to be few barriers to replacing them altogether. Already, approximately 15,000 retail cashier jobs have been lost to technology replacements in France. Furthermore, eliminating requirements to close stores might imply a growing shift toward 24-hour work days.
Beyond these precise concerns though, the changes are prompting some angst among French consumers in general, who worry that the push toward constant availability, 24/7 retailing, and diminished workers’ rights represents a contradiction with the very essence of French life. Its culture historically has embraced the idea that people should not be hurried or working all the time. But if machines encourage an “Americanization” of the workforce, they worry that the result will be not just mass unemployment but even the disappearance of French culture in general.
Discussion Questions:
- How do labor laws, regarding retailing on Sunday, differ in France and the United States?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of allowing retailers to be open on Sunday from retailers’ perspective? From consumers’ perspective?
- What is your personal perspective/opinion on this matter?
Source: Liz Alderman, “Self-Checkout in France Sets Off Battle Over a Day of Rest,” The New York Times, December 26, 2019