Paul from Paris

Peter Sellars' incomparable Inspector Clouseau seems to have been the driving force behind the latest French initiative on business-on-Sunday. Dear to president Sarkozy, the initiative makes complicated the answer to a simple question: can a shop open on Sundays?

• In shopping zones (they're called "exceptional consumption zones" in French; no kidding), stores can open on Sunday. Workers who elect to work on Sunday get two times the ordinary weekday wage. These zones are in urban areas with more than a million inhabitants. For now, they are in Paris, Aix-Marseille, and Lille, but not Lyon.
• In tourist zones, shops of all kinds –not just leisure, sport, or cultural enterprises– can open on Sunday. Except that hypermarkets cannot. Workers get usual wages.
• A city mayor can authorize stores in the city to open five Sundays a year, probably during sale periods. In this case, workers will be paid double-time.

The hodgepodge of rules and exceptions subject business openings to a lot of political decisions. They also make the situation extremely hard for business owners and workers to understand, because the rules change depending on where a business is and what workers do.

Commentators in the English-speaking world took notice when the French parliament approved a bill allowing more businesses to open on Sundays. (I discuss this measure in a separate post.)

Some commentators have explained that some French oppose Sunday shopping. But little has been written to explain why French people dislike the new initiative. Here are four specific cultural institutions that the new measure jeopardizes:

1. Eleven o'clock mass. A longstanding cultural institution, familiar to those who aren't churchgoers: at 11 o'clock on Sunday, the faithful gather at church. Most anywhere in France, there's no need to ask when Sunday mass will be held. My hunch is that this is a holdover from the ancien régime. The hour is late enough to allow people to sleep in (or to get some exercise in the morning). And it segues nicely into lunchtime.
   • An aside on churchgoing sociology in France: there are two exceptions to the eleven o'clock mass custom. The first is "early-bird" mass on Saturday evening; this is usually the Sunday mass, in advance, rather than Saturday mass. It's attended mostly by older women, often widows, possibly to allow them to cook for family on Sunday. The second is "last-call" mass on Sunday evening. It's attended mostly by younger people who spend the weekend with people who aren't churchgoers.
2. Roast chicken. King Henri IV vowed that his kingdom would be prosperous so that all his subjects, including even the most humble peasant, would enjoy a chicken every Sunday. Roast chicken has been a French institution ever since. French butchers everywhere are equipped with outdoor rotisserie machines. Usually there's a line to claim a Sunday roast chicken.
   • An aside on the food trades. Lost in the discussion of work on Sundays are the food trades, where working is the norm –and practically compulsory– on Sunday morning. Bakers and butchers are al open, as are open-air markets. These merchants close at lunchtime and remain closed on Monday.
3. Sunday lunch. This is the family meal par excellence. Family is understood as including (grand-)parents, especially if you don't live with them. The expectation is that much of the day will be spent with one's elders (not with buddies or, for example, other families with young children). This tradition formed the setting of Un dimanche à la campagne, a film by Bertrand Tavernier.
   • The tradition involves a sort of musical chairs and calls for advance planning. One Sunday, a couple will visit her parents; another Sunday, they'll visit his. Grandparents, siblings, and family squabbles complicate negotiations.
4. Elections. In France, elections are held on Sundays, everywhere and always.

I've been a subscriber to The New Yorker since I moved to France many years ago.

Most of the subscription price –over $100 a year for at least the past ten years, per my recollection– represents postal costs. This is a price I've been happy to pay: for this reader, it's been part of the cost of the content, even though it ends up in the pockets of intermediaries.

Of course, I bear another cost: even under the best of circumstances, I receive each issue about a week after readers in the US, were the magazine is based. This cost I've been less happy to pay –some pieces remain worthwhile but lose their crispness after a week– but I've always thought that this was an inevitable product of distance.

The New Yorker now offers its international subscribers a choice:

• The print edition, delivered weekly by post, at an annual cost of € 138; or
• The digital edition, available over the web ever Monday (when the issue appears on American newsstands), at an annual cost of €30.

The New Yorker throws in some sweeteners or freebies: all subscribers can access the magazine's archives, and receive a weekly e-mail summary of the newest issue's contents.

What I like about the offer is that The New Yorker lets subscribers choose. Those who opt for print delivery see that printing and postage costs run to €100 a year.

That's a cost that I'll probably continue to pay. I'm used to reading newspapers on screens, but still have the habit of reading magazines in print form. Maybe this will change over time, or maybe it won't.

For people like me, the savings of a digital edition subscription would likely prove illusory. I'd want to print most or all of each issue. This would involve costs for paper and ink. Mostly it would involve a time cost (that I could cnvert to a financial cost by hiring someone to print the file for me).

I wrote yesterday about how some law firms reportedly handled layoff or pay cut announcements. Some readers asked me how I'd handle the situation differently. Here are a few ideas:

1. Don't cut employee compensation. Cutting associate pay makes no sense. Morale will plunge: some will leave, others will become discouraged. To achieve savings, develop a compensation package that replaces salary by a bonus if measurable targets are met. Partners need to explain how they too are cutting base compensation.
2. Don't pay people not to work. The media report some prominent firms paying first-year associates to defer their start date or experienced associates to take a year off. But what about their skills? The media reports suggest that they don't matter, which is unproductive for either firms or individuals. If idled or under-occupied, associates should be assigned to projects that:
   • have been identified by the firm as worthwhile;
   • will develop associates' skills in measurable ways; and
   • will develop the kind or quality of services the firm offers.
3. Dissociate performance review from retention or compensation decisions. Firms need to be up-front about their motivations to preserve morale and to stand a chance of future business from an alumnus. They should not confuse individual (under-)performance with general economic constraints. Performance should include a broader metric than just hours billed; otherwise, associates risk passing on problems to billing partners.
4. Make management accountable, with targets or standards that are disclosed and that must be met.
5. All office communications should pass two tests:
   • What would clients say if they read this?
   • What would our competitors say if they read this?

The talk turned to environmental issues, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, during US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's visit to India, with US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern tagging along.

As reported by the US media, India "rebuffed" or "refused" the call of the USA to mandate lower carbon dioxide emissions, backed up by a threat, the US House of Representatives having voted a bill that would require the US to take trade sanctions against countries that did not adopt binding emissions reduction policies.

India's minister of State for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, explained, "There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions."

Put on the defensive, Secretary Clinton claimed that "the US does not, and will not, do anything that would limit India's economic progress."

The diplomatically awkward exchange brought to mind an op-ed piece by geographer and physiologist Jared Diamond. Diamond pointed out that Americans (and Europeans) consume resources at a rate basically 32 times higher than people in the developing world, including India.

This observation makes Ramesh's comment understandable, and Clinton's call hypocritical: if India increased relative consumption from 1 to 3, it would arguably boost greenhouse gas production; however, if the US reduced its relative consumption from 32 to 27, this would arguably reduce greenhouse gas emissions while leaving Americans seven times better-off than Indians. Whatever the numbers, from India's perspective and Diamond's conceptual frameork it seems easier for the US to drop down from 32 than it would be for India to cut from 1. Of course, everyone would be better off if India increased greenhouse gas emissions less slowly than it increased its aggregate wealth and consumption. But this is a different matter than asking India to cut future emisions.