The 35-hour workweek was a measure adopted first in France, in February 2000, under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's administration. The previous legal duration of the workweek was 39 hours. The 35 hours were not a hard limit; but any further working time is to be considered overtime.

Rationale

(See workweek for further discussion of the health and leisure-related reasons for many nations to consider limited workweeks important.)

The objectives of the law were twofold:

• Take advantage of improvements in productivity of modern society in order to give workers some more personal time in order to enhanced their quality of life.
• Yield a better repartition of work, in a context where some people work long hours while some others are unemployed.

Another reason was that the Jospin administration took advantage of the changes introduced with the 35-hour workweek in order to relax workforce legislation.

An ancillary purpose of the reduction in hours was to improve quality of life by allowing French workers more leisure, but the primary purpose was redistribution of labor. A 10.2% decrease in the hours extracted from each worker would, theoretically, require firms to hire correspondingly more workers, a remedy for unemployment.

Criticism

The 35-hour workweek is highly controversial in France. Generally speaking, left-wing parties support it, while right-wing parties and the MEDEF employers' union oppose it.

Critics of the 35-hour workweek have argued that it has failed to serve its purpose because an increase in recruitment has not happened. According to them, firms, being stubbornly against hiring new workers, have instead simply increased per-hour production quotas. According to right-wing parties and economic commentators, French firms avoid hiring new workers in general because French workforce regulations makes it difficult to lay off workers during a poor economic period.

The right-wing Raffarin administration also partially blamed the deaths during the heat wave of August 2003 on the 35-hour workweek: according to them, public hospitals were inadequately staffed to handle the number of patients because of the workweek law. The opposition has charged that Raffarin simply tries to lay the blame for his shortcomings and those of health minister Jean-François Mattei on others.

Amendments to the law

The Raffarin administration, of which some members are vocal critics of the law, has gradually pushed for further relaxation of the legal working time requirements. On December 22, 2004, Parliament extended the maximal number of overtime hours per year from 180 to 220; on March 31, 2005, Parliament another law extended the possibilities of overtime hours.

References

• Law 2005-296 of March 31, 2005
• Workforce code

External links

• Official governmental site on the 35-hour workweek