Time running short for France's 35-hour work week

By CATHERINE FIELD

PARIS - The 35-hour week, the innovation that earned French workers scorn and envy around the world, seems destined to fade away as France grapples with a sagging economy and stubbornly high unemployment.

Laws limiting the working week to 35 hours, passed by the Socialist Government in 1998 and 2000, were presented as the panacea for joblessness and a revolution in employment relations.

But the rightwing Government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin says it is the source of innumerable problems, including a widespread image of the French as the most work-shy people in the world.

Raffarin last week declared it was vital to restore pride and honour in work and ensure that "France's future is not that of a huge leisure park".

He said it was time for "social dialogue" about how the 35-hour week could be changed, but did not say whether he favoured scrapping it.

The architect of the reform, former social affairs minister Martine Aubry, warned of a battle ahead, saying "the public today talks about the 35-hour week with the same devotion as they spoke yesterday about paid holidays", an innovation from 1936.

The 35-hour week may be popular, but many people say it was too much, too soon, and Aubry's way of introducing it was too costly, especially for small businesses.

"People today are just thinking about their leisure time rather than their work, and this is not the best way of getting the country on its feet," said Nicole Mulot, a 55-year-old child psychiatrist in Paris.

Claude Benoot, 57, who owns a small radio station in northern France, said the 35-hour week had been a nightmare.

"If we want this country to recover, we will have to work more, not less. The reduction in working time means that France has become less and less competitive."

The controversy was sparked in part by the heatwave that struck France in August, killing more than 14,000 old and vulnerable people.

An inquiry found that many hospitals were chronically understaffed because so many doctors and nurses were taking summer holidays of three or four weeks, leaving staffing levels dangerously low.

There is also deepening concern about France's economic problems - anaemic growth, a budget deficit that has breached the eurozone's limit of 3 per cent of gross domestic product and 10 per cent unemployment.

But how much the 35-hour week is to blame for the country's malaise is hotly debated.

Figures being aired by people in the Raffarin Government say the reform is costing the country up to €15 billion ($29.5 billion) a year; Aubry put the figure at €1.2 billion ($2.3 billion) at the most.

Defenders point to many intangible benefits in wellbeing from the 35-hour week, such as fathers who are able to spend a day or so off with their children every month, as well as a decline in sick days taken.

And they say many firms have benefited from the original law, and from modifications introduced by the Raffarin Government last January.

These include the possibility for management to negotiate flexible work arrangements, such as requiring staff to do different jobs or longer hours for given periods provided that, by the end of the year, they end up with the average of a 35-hour week.

This is one reason trade unions have been remarkably muted about the clamour to gut the 35-hour week and why some bosses are discreetly in favour of Aubry's laws, or at least a toned-down version of them.

Many unionists are manual workers who, under the 35-hour week, may be asked to work for longer and more stressful periods and not get the overtime on which they depended to make ends meet.

The argument that France's international competitiveness has been damaged by the 35-hour week does not have much validity, at least as far as the statistical evidence is concerned.

OECD figures for 2000 place France third from bottom in Europe for the number of hours worked, but second from top for output per person.