# chômage technique



## Sibylle64

Bonjour, 

Je cherche à dire "chômage technique " en anglais. 
Is "technical unemployment" ok ? 
Many thanks in advance for your help


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## hercules

être mis au chômage technique to be laid off


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## playboyrichard

I think "made redundant" is less colloquial than "laid off" and basically means the same thing. "Le chômage technique" could therefore be "redundancy".


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## edwingill

Involuntary layoffs


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## playboyrichard

Do we really say "involuntary lay-offs"? I've heard of "compulsory redundancy"...?


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## Sibylle64

So if I want to say "je ne risque pas d'être au chômage technique dans les deux prochaines années" => "I am unlikely to be laid off in the 2 upcoming years" 

Is that alright ? 

Thanks very much for your help !


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## manska86

involuntary dismissal?


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## laurent_atl

As far as i know 'chômage technique' does not mean that you are laid off but that you are put on unpaid leave. I think the technical term is furlough.


Layoff is 'licenciement'


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## silwilhith

I suspect this "chômage technique" to be a specificity of French Employment regulations. And therefore quite hard to translate.

This is actually a procedure that an employer can request to the district government body (DDTE) to apply for public subsidies to pay his/her employees while they cannot work due to technical/external circumstances, out of employer's control.
The employees stay under contract but can stay at their home while the failure is repaired.
(without deduction of any sick/annual leave days)

Could it be a word in English for this situation, I doubt it.


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## wildan1

_to be on administrative leave (AE)_ - the employee is told not to come to work but is still paid. This sometimes happens because there is a hazard in the workplace and no one can enter, bad weather like a snowstorm that shuts down a city, or for an individual under investigation and is waiting for the outcome.

_layoff/be laid off_ (AE) and _redundancy/be made redundant_ (BE) are both official terms for the same idea, but used on different continents. Neither one is slang.


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## silwilhith

ahh ! "Administrative leave" makes full sense here for "chômage technique" !  
Thank you Wildan1.


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## david314

playboyrichard said:


> Do we really say "*involuntary lay-offs*"?...


  Absolutely.


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## broglet

silwilhith said:


> I suspect this "chômage technique" to be a specificity of French Employment regulations. And therefore quite hard to translate.
> 
> This is actually a procedure that an employer can request to the district government body (DDTE) to apply for public subsidies to pay his/her employees while they cannot work due to technical/external circumstances, out of employer's control.
> The employees stay under contract but can stay at their home while the failure is repaired.
> (without deduction of any sick/annual leave days)
> 
> Could it be a word in English for this situation, I doubt it.


Very good point silwilhith.  Different countries have different laws, so terms are not always precisely translatable.  Chômage technique is clearly not redundancy (where the job effectively disappears) but it seems to be a form of lay off (which under UK law is something quite different from redundancy).  So I agree with hercules as far as BE is concerned.


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## Punky Zoé

Hi

In fact the official term is "chômage partiel" which may be - despite its name  - "total", but for four weeks at the maximum. (it is often called "chômage technique" but it may be caused by other reasons than technical ones).

It is an alternative to redundancies, when difficulties are a temporary problem.

The dictionary gives 'short(-)time' for chômage partiel.


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## pulsar29

As a side note, using this expression "je suis au chômage technique" is not necessarily linked to the technical, legal aspect of one's work situation. It can be used colloquially whenever you find yourself with nothing to do, after having completed a task much faster than you had planned, or after having discovered that the task you were given actually involves doing nothing  I'm not sure there's an English equivalent to this very loose expression.


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## silwilhith

broglet said:


> Very good point silwilhith. Different countries have different laws, so terms are not always precisely translatable.


Thank you Broglet, my pleasure.  

I'm currently attending a course about "NZ commercial laws" and coming from "French Codes", I feel like landing on another planet , with quite different approaches to same issues.   

For instance I start to think that translating "Lawer" (who knows the laws) into "Avocat" (who speaks in behalf of somebody) is not totally exact because the functions have not precisely the same purpose.

Similarly try to match a _Chef de Projet Informatique_ with an IT Project Manager, I wish you good luck !  

(And I apologise to moderators for this disgression while talking about _chômage technique _ feel free to wipe out this answer if irrelevant)


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## Punky Zoé

pulsar29 said:


> As a side note, using this expression "je suis au chômage technique" is not necessarily linked to the technical, legal aspect of one's work situation. It can be used colloquially whenever you find yourself with nothing to do, after having completed a task much faster than you had planned, or after having discovered that the task you were given actually involves doing nothing  I'm not sure there's an English equivalent to this very loose expression.


You're perfectly right , and we need more information from Sybille64 in order to know if it is really "chômage partiel" or a temporary lack of occupation.


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## gabrielle22

Bonjour, 

Je voudrais traduire l'expression "chômage technique". Les employé travaille toujours dans l'entreprise mais les heures sont réduires à 14h/semaine par exemple. Cette réduction est du à une baisse des commandes.

J'ai vu que "layoffs" était possible mais je n'ai pas l'impression que ça correspond car ici les employés sont toujours au travail.
"structurally unemployed" me paraît aussi bizarre car il ne sont pas vraiment "unemployed". Est-ce que cette expression existe en anglais?

Merci d'avance.


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## Chris' Spokesperson

Bonjour Gabrielle,

A sentence would be helpful but one of the following could be the answer you're looking for:

practically unemployed
for all sense and purposes unemployed
technically unemployed

Par exemple: My hours have been cut down to only 14 a week so for all sense and purposes I _am_ unemployed!

Est-ce que tu as une phrase particulière que tu veux traduire ?


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## jierbe31

Bonjour,

Le GDT donne plusieurs réponses, notamment "_technical_ _unemployment_" (mais oui !) et "_temporary layoff_" pour "chômage temporaire".
Le GDT s'avère souvent très pertinent, tu devrais l'ajouter dans tes favoris.
Voici un lien qui t'amène sur sa page d'accueil.


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## gabrielle22

Non je n'ai pas de phrase car en fait je comptait mettre ça dans mon powerpoint de présentation de stage et donc "chômage technique" serait un point dans mon exposé.


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## Chris' Spokesperson

Ah, je vois...alors dans un tel contexte je pencherais pour la proposition de jierbe 'technical unemployment'.

Bonne chance avec la présentation


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## gabrielle22

Merci pour vos conseil (et pour le site de GDT, je ne connaissait pas) !!


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## broglet

'technical unemployment' is not used and has no meaning in UK employment law


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## Camis12

Je trouve "administrative leave" la mieulleure traduction (je suis anglaise). Il se peut que "technical unemployment" ou "temporary layoff" sont plus pertinant au Canada pourtant.


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## Chris' Spokesperson

But they are still working, they're working 14 hours a week so, _technically_ speaking, they are both unemployed and employed.  It's not quite the same thing as administrative leave.


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## Camis12

I think "part time administrative leave" would solve this problem


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## wildan1

gabrielle22 said:


> Je voudrais traduire l'expression "chômage technique". Les employé travaille toujours dans l'entreprise mais les heures sont réduires à 14h/semaine par exemple. Cette réduction est du à une baisse des commandes.


_Partial layoffs_ or _furloughs_ (maybe this is more in the public sector) are AE terms for _" chômage technique partiel ". _

Lots of government agencies here are imposing furloughs on their employees these days because of budget crises: Employees are furloughed every Friday, or must choose X number of days each month when they will not work (and not be paid) in order to balance the agency's budget.


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## broglet

gabrielle22 said:


> Je voudrais traduire l'expression "chômage technique". Les employés travaillent toujours dans l'entreprise mais les heures sont réduirtes à 14h/semaine par exemple. Cette réduction est due à une baisse des commandes.
> 
> J'ai vu que "layoffs" était possible mais je n'ai pas l'impression que ça correspond car ici les employés sont toujours au travail.
> "structurally unemployed" me paraît aussi bizarre car ils ne sont pas vraiment "unemployed". Est-ce que cette expression existe en anglais?


No, that doesn't exist in English - we would say they are working "short-time" (veuillez pardonner les corrections!)


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## Chuck Bass

Voilà une explication précise de ce qu'est le "chômage partiel" :

http://www.travail-emploi-sante.gouv...tiel,1139.html

Selon le site du Pôle Emploi "chômage partiel" et "chômage technique" sont deux façons de dire la même chose.
http://www.pole-emploi.fr/employeur/...e.jspz?id=4076

Ceci ne peut pas se traduire par "redundancy" dont vous trouverez la définition ici : http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employme...cy/DG_10026616

"Structural unemployment" serait une autre façon incorrecte de traduire "chômage technique" :
http://www.qfinance.com/dictionary/s...l-unemployment

Finalement "layoff" a aussi un sens différent puisque ça implique un licenciement définitif SAUF s'il s'agit d'un "temporary layoff".
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dict...british/layoff

Conclusion: Le terme qui se rapproche le plus est donc "temporary layoff" comme vous pourrez le constater en lisant le site suivant :
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employme...ff/DG_10026693

Néanmoins il faudrait plus de recherche avant d'affirmer qu'il s'agit d'une correspondance exacte des termes, chose qui m'étonnerait un peu


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