"My office hours are from 9 to 5"

[andthen]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

The article in the OP explains this isn't a law and states which jobs will be impacted:

"In an effort to improve French citizens’ work-life balance, employers’ federations and unions in the European nation have signed a legally-binding labor agreement requiring workers to ignore emails from bosses if they’re received outside of their usual working hours.

The new deal covers many employees in the technology and consultancy sectors, with France-based workers at Facebook and Google among them."

Now that everyone is over the flashy titles of the news reports and know the details, could something like this ever happen and be effective in the U.S.?

I would say its possible but not likely. Having spent time living and traveling a lot overseas, the American culture is quite different good, bad, or indifferent. Its always interesting because my friends who are from and live in other countries pick up on this right away when they interact with Americans.

I think perhaps in future generations there maybe an overall shift in attitude of better work/life balance. Of course there will still be people who fall out of the bell curve. I think that many Americans are goal oriented and achievers, and if that means working super long hours, and foregoing vacation then that's part of what one needs to do. But I've also seen more and more people who I know that are trying to draw a line in the sand and leave work at work, myself included (although I'm only successful about 70% of the time).

Maybe there's some chip embedded that tells Americans to strive, strive, strive.