35-hour workweek

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The 35-hour workweek is a measure adopted first in France, in February 2000, under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's administration. Like other nations' policies regarding worker hours, it aims to discourage companies from requiring a contribution of time judged, by that country, to be excessive.

Rationale

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

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.

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. French firms avoid hiring new workers in general because the French political system makes it difficult to lay off workers during a poor economic period.

The French political administration has also blamed the deaths during the heat wave of August 2003 on the 35-hour workweek: hospitals were inadequately staffed to handle the number of patients.

Other professionals who work for international companies or over the Internet complain that the 35-hour workweek hamstrings their productivity and puts them at a distinct disadvantage compared to their counterparts in countries that do not have such policies.

fr:Réduction du temps de travail