French law, French tradition and what some perceive as “modern times” are leading to a clash in France over laws mandating that artisan trades—and that includes the bread bakers—must close for at least one day a week. The tradition is old, but the law dates to 1999.
Recent moves toward 7-day-a-week shopping in France have been encouraged by recent “reform” laws initiated by Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron. The laws are intended to remove layers of government control of many aspects of daily life, but have not applied to the bread bakeries.
Bakery owners claim that if they must close for a day they will have to lay off workers and will lose money…although until recently all bakeries were closed for a day, but not on the same day, so there was never a shortage of bread. A number of bakers have been fined, including Stephane Cazeneuve, a former holder of the “Best Baguette in France” award.
Speaking of baguettes: One of the first acts of the Paris Commune in 1971 was to ban night work for bakers, whose lives at that time were very hard, and most work was done at night because of long rising and baking times. The law did not survive the commune.
The baguette was not the most common French bread until the 1920s, although its popularity rose in the late 19th century. Because of its shape, and because it’s baked fairly rapidly in a steam oven, it was able to comply with the 1920 law that forbade bakery work between 10 pm and 4 am.
I’m not so sure I trust free markets to run things so well…and I’ve seen mice run themselves to death on a treadmill. But I do think that it should be possible for bakeries to be open 24/7/365 as long as workers’ hours are reasonable and there are enough of them.
In a free market, workers hours are never reasonable.
If Pierre the Baker wont work a 14 hour day – then there are a million immigrants who will.
Europeans you can work a maximum of 48 hours a week.
PHeymont — it’s one thing for flights and traffic laws and such to be regulated where there is a greater common good. But the idea of a government regulating when bakers can make bread is absurd in concept and execution. It is this kind of nanny micromanagement that will ruin an economy. Surely the politicians can find better ways to spend their time.
I’m sorry, but this is just tooooooooo much regulation.
The government should let bakers decide when they want to open or not. Free markets have a way of sorting this type of thing out beautifully.