Globalisation, 35h work week and India...

In an interesting edito, Thomas Friedman is attacking the European social model further to the French and Dutch referendums. Friedman compares the hunger of Indian workers ready to work 35h a day (sic) to French blue-collar workers who, according to Friedman, have voted 'NON' on the EU treaty in part to preserve their 35h work week and because of their fears of the "Polish plumbers".

Friedman observes that outsourcing is going to India not only because of low wages but also because Indian workers are ready to work much longer than their Western counterpart. He concludes by writing:

Yes, this is a bad time for France and friends to lose their appetite for hard work - just when India, China and Poland are rediscovering theirs.

Although I haven't been to India (yet), the fact that an Indian worker is ready to work much more than a French one does not surprises me. However, in his analysis, Friedman implies that by just working harder, India will produce more but what about productivity, what about diminishing returns when one works 100 hours a week? There is no magic formula to boost productivity otherwise the UK would have closed its productivity gap a long time ago. Similarly, it's pretty obvious that after a 20 hours of work in a single day, your productivity will be pretty low so Indian workers will at some point experience diminishing return if they go for the 35h per day.

I'm not saying "Old Europe" shouldn't reform its social system - it should and quickly - but I don't think Europe's competitivity is threathened yet by India's long working hours.