French Labor Minister Michel Sapin called for local authorities to have more say on a proposed reform of restrictions on Sunday opening for shops, just hours before a government-commissioned report on the issue was to due to be released.
The report, expected to clarify which sectors will be allowed to do business on Sunday and under what conditions, was to be presented to French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault yesterday.
In an interview with BFM TV, Sapin called for a “controlled relaxation” of the ban on Sunday work, saying it should be organized on a “regional basis.”
He said that local authorities were best-placed to gauge residents’ shopping needs and habits.
MESSY
“On one side of the road, it is open. On the other, it does not have the right to open. You have employees who are paid twice as much on Sunday, others nothing more. Of course today one must put some order in this mess,” Sapin said.
Several DIY chains, including Bricorama, Castorama and Leroy Merlin, have been pressing the government to allow them to do business on Sunday to preserve jobs and fight competition from Internet retailers working seven days a week.
France’s unemployment rate, now at 10.9 percent and close to the all-time high of 11.2 percent set in 1997, is a thorn in the side of French President Francois Hollande, who has staked his credibility on turning around the eurozone’s second-biggest economy and lowering the jobless total.
Last week, Hollande backed away from his pledge to bring unemployment down by the end of the year, saying instead that it would take as long as necessary.
According to French daily Les Echos, the Bailly report will not include sectors other than those which in 2009 received exemptions to the ban on Sunday work such as furniture and gardening retailers.
Citing unidentified government sources, Les Echos said that the report recommends denying DIY chains the exemption they want, but giving them a temporary exemption until the reform is completed.
MORE SUNDAYS
The report also calls for allowing city mayors to raise the number of Sundays a year shops can open to 12 from five, according to the weekly Journal du Dimanche.
Paris tourist hot spots Galeries Lafayette and Printemps have long been calling to be allowed to work more Sundays.
Younger employees appear to want a loosening of the rules.
According to a survey by French union CFDT, 60 percent of people under 25, a category with a jobless rate of close to 25 percent, favor working on Sunday.
However, not all the workforce agrees.
“The majority of employees do not want to work on Sunday and want it to be clearly framed,” CFDT secretary general Laurent Berger told French radio Europe 1 on Sunday.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to