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Comment by toddkazakov | Hacker News Reader

There is big problem with the employment in France. I spent almost a year there and this is a country where I am not going back.

I worked as an engineer in big enterprise at 35 hours a week + RTTs - meaning I am working 37.5 hours but I can take more days off. Everything sounded great before I went there and realized there is double standard - employees vs. contractors. If you are a contractor you have no rights and you are expected to work as much as your manager says. In the end I was spending more than 50-55 hours a week and the overtime I did was not paid accordingly. If I wasn't OK with this I'd be let go easily and there are no laws that protect me. I would not be fired, but I will be transferred back to the contracting company who is not obliged to pay me, if I am not working for a client.

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I'd be really curious to know which contracting company you worked for. What you are stating is not true: when you are transferred back to the contracting company (for whatever reason), if they are still your employer, this company has to pay you. Even if you don't work for a client. This is not that uncommon actually to be in that kind of situation. However, contracting companies are well known to be really hard on their contractors (especially developers), if they saw that you would believe that you wouldn't get paid unless you work free extra hours, that doesn't surprise me that they'd use that. But it would never have happened. In France, work laws are much more in favor of the employee, they would never have gotten away with not paying you.

> I will be transferred back to the contracting company who is not obliged to pay me, if I am not working for a client.

this is highly suspicious. In France services companies, people are paid in between contracts.

The ONLY case where this would be possible is if the OP was self-employed, using a contracting company to get a position with a client ("portage salarial") - In which case they are not employees and hence aren't really in a position to criticise employment practices.

nope, there are some cases of "interim" too in IT.

The company is Astek Sud-Est. And yes, contractors are paid between contracts in normal contracting companies. In Sophia-Antipolis, where I was situated it was a common practice to put a clause in the contract that you won't be paid, even though by law should be paying you. In the end, when you are a foreigner and you barely speak the language it's rather difficult to seek your rights.

OK, so you were working for Amadeus through Astek. I think this is just a case of your service company exploiting you by trying to scare you. The clause they were talking about is that you don't get the extra 25e/day "fixed lunch and travel expenses" when you're not being pimped out. This is more a case of Astek defrauding social security (by hiding a major proportion of salary as expenses).

The clause you are talking about was removed in favor of lunch coupons. I had a clause in my contract saying that I won't be paid between contracts. Seriously. Illegal or not that's the case.

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