A French firm where workers are busy doing nothing - and getting paid for it

Every day Carmen Girard turns up for work at National Power Packs in Pontarlier in the département of Doubs in eastern France.

The 36-year-old has been working for the company, which assembles rechargeable batteries, for 15 years.

But since June, Girard and her four female colleagues have quite literally had nothing to do.

And they're getting a regular monthly income for not doing it.

A month earlier their boss informed them that assembly and production were being transferred to facilities just outside of Rotterdam in the Netherlands where he lives and that the company in Pontarlier was effectively ceasing its activities.

The machinery has remained in place and so have the five employees. They weren't fired - and still haven't been.

Instead they have received their regular monthly salaries for doing absolutely nothing apart from turning up each day.

A typical day starts for Girard at 8.30am.

"First of all I deal with my personal letters and emails, then we watch television, play Scrabble, Rubik's Cube or Sudoku," she said on Laurent Ruquier's afternoon radio programme, On va s'gêner.

"It's like a phantom company right now - 440 square metres with nothing to do," she added.

There has been no sign of life from their boss, apart from a couple of emails informing them of the closure and instructing them to tie up loose ends with customers.

And in spite of repeated attempts to reach him, he's no longer answering his mobile 'phone.

The big question of course is why the five women haven't been fired. And it's one to which Girard says she has no answer.

They've contacted union representatives to find out where they stand legally and have have been told that if they look for and accept jobs elsewhere they'll be considered to have resigned from their current positions, thereby losing eligibility to any redundancy packages that might be coming their way - eventually.

Girard admits the situation could be worse, realising that there probably aren't that many bosses around who would continue to pay salaries to employees for sitting around doing nothing.

All the same she and the other four woman find themselves in employment limbo, knowing that they have no future with the company but just wishing that their employer would take the necessary steps so that they can all move on.

"Sometimes we do a tour of the building just to talk to employees at another company," she says.

"We feel useless and as though we don't really deserves our salaries."