Hard Work, Hard Times; Europe's fears over outsourcing look to be overblown.

Byline: Carla Power (With Tracy McNicoll in Paris, Malgorzata Bogusz in Warsaw and Stefan Theil in Berlin)

It's close to midnight in Warsaw, and Marzena Beresciuk has taken a taxi straight from work to a 24/7 convenience store to buy groceries. Late nights are the only time the carefully coiffed record promoter can find to shop, given her standard 12-hour days. Like the rest of those lucky enough to have jobs in high-unemployment Central and Eastern Europe, she works hard. The average workweek in Europe's new member states is 44.4 hours, compared with 38.2 in the 15 Western members of the European Union. "Let's get to work," Warsaw professionals like to joke. "The earlier we start, the later we'll finish."

Western European workers are spooked. They're haunted by the specter of Eastern European upstarts luring their jobs away with the promise of cheaper labor and longer hours. In Germany, employers exploited such fears to wring unprecedented concessions from unions this summer. In France, a recent poll shows that outsourcing now tops the list of economic worries. No matter that businesses have been shifting operations to Eastern Europe since 1990, or the fact that experts say it's actually helped save Western European companies by improving their global competitiveness. "There's a panic," says French union rep Bernard Fillonneau. With an ear for the political groundswell, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin just pledged 1 billion euro to "the battle against outsourcing." Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, nurturing presidential ambitions, quickly sounded a similar note. All this brought a tart riposte from Estonian Prime Minister Juhan Parts, who pointed out that it was "better that companies stay in the EU than move to Asia."

He's right. Workers may be hurting now, but in the long run the Eastern European "threat" may be the best thing that ever happened to the Western European economy. It should speed reforms, convince workers of the need to loosen labor rules and work more competitively, and provide a bulwark against companies' going to more far-flung competitors like China and India. This summer five Central and Eastern European states lobbied in Brussels for increased flexibility under the European Working Time Directive, arguing that the EU's 48-hour limit on the working week cut into their productivity. That competitive drive, says Katinka Barysch at the Centre for European Reform in London, is crucial for Europe's survival in the ...