Marseilles enjoys an easy-going approach to life on the Mediterranean coast

Council employees were protesting in Marseilles today against a revolutionary scheme by the local authority: civil servants are to be forced to work the hours that they are paid for.

In an affair that plays to the easy-going image of the Mediterranean port, unions are upset over an attempt by Jean-Claude Gaudin, the mayor, to scrap time-honoured practices that enable the city’s 11,500 municipal staff to enjoy loose work schedules.

“In a city where . . . the municipal employees do not have a reputation for exhausting themselves on the job, the council has decided to smash a taboo,” said La Provence, a local newspaper.

The mayor’s struggle offers a glimpse of the challenge facing President Macron as he sets about rewriting France’s protective