Boffin, I think it's organised differently.
A general overview...
The impression we have is that French lecturers/professors teach more hours than others in Europe (about 10 a week), but do have tenure which has become rarer in other countries.
Pay is lower than in the UK (it's 1,800 euros/month for a lecturer at the start of their career, with very slow and small rises; after 20 years, you can earn 3,000 euros). Many lecturers can't afford to buy property in Paris or my region.
Sabbaticals are very, very, rare, so research gets done during term-time or over the summer, but since summer is usually taken up with marking and with preparing next year's new courses, time is hard to find.
One reason I'm interested is that our status (which is defined by the gvmt as we are still civil servants, and our independence is protected by the Constitution, theoretically) is under reform. Presidents of Unis are being given much more power. In particular, that of deciding how many hours everyone teaches; the 10h/week "can" be increased, and no figures have been given as to the extent of said increase, if it is decided that a lecturer/Prof is not doing valid or sufficient research. But in my field (Arts&Humanities) validity/sufficiency is hard to define. The Ministry bods wanted to base criteria on the type of journal articles were published in, but that means condemning many small, yet crucial journals to death because they don't fit the mould (international editorial board, etc.). And the criteria were science-based, the idea that one might spend a long time producing a critical edition of a literary text hadn't crossed the bureaucrats minds so they were planning to make a monography count the same as an article. The idea that scientists regularly co-publish and thus appear to have produced 5 or 6 articles in one year, which is impossible in literature, had apparently not been considered either.
The general impression we get is that those in charge think academics doss about doing sweet FA and need a kick in the pants. The reform states that a lecturer/prof has two missions, teaching and research. It simply ignores the increasing hours of admin we all do and which have piled up as each year there is a new reform and we have to completely revise all our courses and our degree structures.Admin is an obligation, but will not be taken into account in assessing why someone hasn't managed to publish lots of stunning articles one year. The trap being that if your teaching load does get increased, you'll have no chance of ever finding time for research. I am Director of Studies to 45 1st Year students, responsible for 3 Erasmus exchanges, co-ordinator of 4 courses and general co-ordinator of one major teaching programme, as well as being an elected member of several Councils and Commissions. None of that is taken into account when considering someone's "performance" or "profitability".
To cap it all, the gvmt funding for unis has just been announced (often e-mailed to Uni Presidents at 11pm on a Friday late in December, with injunctions to vote the budgets by the following Tuesday), and almost every Uni in the country has been ordered to slash posts. So it seems obvious that in fact nearly everyone's teaching hours will necessarily have to be increased, to cover for the job cuts.
That's the nub of it, really. I'd be curious to know how it all compares to RAE-oriented, selection-based UK universities. (Yep, forgot to mention that we are not allowed to select students; anyone with any baccalauréat, including a vocational one in car maintenance or technology, can study anything they like in any Uni of their choice (except medicine). The first year is therefore full of people who wanted to do other, selective higher ed courses but were refused, so go to Uni as a default choice. There are 45 people per tutorial group, many of whom have no desire to be there and are only students because it provides them with Social Security and health insurance. Our pass rate is unsurprisingly low in 1st Year, for which we are also being slated and criticised.)
That was a bit long; if you are willing to contact me off-thread and spare the others here the finer points of academe in the UK, I'll give you an e-mail address.