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French lawmakers OK roll back on 35-hour workweek

After weeks of angry debate and street protests, French lawmakers effectively dismantled the country's 35-hour workweek by voting to allow employers to increase working hours.

In a final vote on Tuesday, the National Assembly approved a government-backed bill permitting employers to negotiate deals with staff to increase working time by 220 hours a year in return for better pay.

The bill effectively clears the way for the gradual erosion of the 35-hour week, a flagship policy of the former Socialist-led government that gave many people more time off but added to concerns about France's declining global competitiveness.

The shorter workweek was introduced on a voluntary basis in 1998 and made compulsory two years later in a bid to force employers to hire more people. But France's current 10 percent jobless rate is testament to its failure to generate the promised millions of new jobs.

Deputies approved the new law by 350 votes to 135. Although it does not formally abolish the 35-hour workweek, it sidesteps it by allowing employers to offer staff extra working hours at a higher rate of pay. It also enables workers to sell part of their holiday entitlement back to their employers, or to put it toward training or early retirement.

In order to apply the changes, however, companies will have to break away from their broad sector-wide agreements with unions -- unchanged by the new law -- and negotiate deals with their own staff representatives.
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