Europe, Work | 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.

Ever worry about getting caught by police using your cellphone while driving? That was not enough of a risk for one German driver, who had an entire office installed in his FORD Mondeo station wagon. Undercover highway police in southern Germany on Monday pulled over a 34-year-old IT specialist after he conducted an illegal passing maneuver and was going 80 miles per hour in a reduced 62-mile-per-hour zone on Germany's infamous super highway, the autobahn.

French workers will soon have to stay on the job -- for all of 35 hours a week -- until they are 62.

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.