France bans work e-mail after 6 p.m.

France already has a 35-hour work week, and a new rule is designed to make sure that it doesn't start shading toward 40 hours because of work-related e-mail.

The Guardian reports that the rule forbids workers from checking their phones or computers for work stuff after 6 p.m., and it forbids employers from pressuring them to do so.

The move apparently doesn't affect all workers in France, but it does cover about 1 million workers in the tech industry — including French employees of Google and Facebook.

At Fox Business, a U.S. labor expert finds it hard to believe the IT industry can manage such a draconian shut-off time.

"There's always something going wrong off the clock — when a computer goes down, it doesn't go down between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m."

A post at Fast Company agrees that it might be tough to enforce, but adds that "it's a nice perk to have in any case."

Elsewhere, Germany already has a similar rule in place, while Sweden is experimenting with a 30-hour work week.

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