Europe, Workers | featured news

With its long vacations, short hours and myriad workers' rights, France has a reputation for being a hard place to do business. Now add this to the mix: A law working its way through parliament would grant amnesty to workers who have ransacked their company's offices or threatened their bosses during a labor dispute.

Workers walk off the job with anger over country's financial crisis.

Residents of Swiss financial center Zurich know that their country has more to offer than world-class chocolate and precision watches. They can now brag that, on the whole, they earn more than anyone in the world. Zurich-dwellers rake in $22.60 per hour in average net pay, according to a wage survey released August 19. The runner-up city is less than 200 miles southwest: Geneva, where jobs pay $20.40 per hour.

Striking French workers of an American manufacturing company looked likely to hold their boss hostage for a second night on Wednesday after locking him in for more than 24 hours, as nationwide anger mounted over layoffs.