We had a great debate about this a while ago, but I think it got lost in the great deletion of November. I wasn't very fond about this, and this article increased my skepticism.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... rking_more

France Dismantles Its 35-Hour Workweek

1 hour, 56 minutes ago

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By LAURENCE FROST, AP Business Writer

PARIS - Sophie Guilbaud not only holds a full-time job, she also helps run her son's nursery and treats herself to regular weekdays of shopping, movies and art shows. The secret to her balancing act is a remarkable piece of social engineering — France's 35-hour workweek. Introduced under the Socialists but headed for effective abolition by lawmakers Tuesday, "les 35 heures" have been a boon for some but, critics argue, a big drain on the economy.

Heated debate over dismantling the working time law has fed into wider political and literary soul-searching in France, on themes ranging from the country's economic frailty and bureaucratic office culture to whether quality of life should be measured in time or money.

For Guilbaud, a Parisian who works as a loan company manager, that last question is a no-brainer.

"Work is not the only thing in my life," she said, suggesting she might quit rather than work more hours.

But with unemployment at 10 percent, politicians of all stripes acknowledge that the country's unique 35-hour law has failed in its original ambition: to force employers to hire massively. What's more, there are strong signs that it hurt living standards as employers froze salaries to make up for lost labor.

"The intention was to spread work around, but the effect was to spread our salaries around," Thierry Breton, France's new finance minister, said last week.

A government-backed bill that effectively restores the previous 39-hour workweek is expected to win final approval this week, despite massive public protests earlier this month and denunciations by the now out-of-power Socialists.

Amid soaring unemployment and stagnating wages, the reform is supported by jobseekers and even by factory workers, according to a survey that pollsters CSA published last month — and by 46 percent of the overall population, with 43 percent opposed.

There are other signs that the vision expounded by former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Socialists now rings hollow in some surprisingly left-wing constituencies.

Often touted as the working mother's godsend, the 35-hour week actually made life harder for poorer women and single parents, according to women's organization CLEF.

"The women that suffered were the lowest paid, who needed all the overtime they could get to make ends meet," said CLEF president Monique Halpern. "I think this is one of the reasons that Lionel Jospin lost the elections."

Clara Gaymard, the globe-trotting head of the French International Investment Agency, contends the 35-hour week has damaged investment in France, mainly because of its negative image in countries like the United States — France's biggest source of investment.

"The perception was that the French didn't want to work any more," she said, whereas French workers remain among the most productive in the world, ahead of Britain, Germany, the United States and Japan, according to the European statistics agency Eurostat.

Gaymard is the wife of former finance minister Herve Gaymard, who resigned last month in a scandal over his lavish publicly funded apartment.

Marc Touati, chief economist at Paris-based Natexis Banques Populaires, conceded the law initially created some jobs and gave large employers an incentive to offer more flexible schedules because there were tax breaks and business was good.

In today's uncertain economic environment, though, the shorter workweek is "destroying jobs because companies wonder whether it's worth taking people on for just 35 hours a week," Touati said.

Other governments regulate work hours, but France's law came under particular scrutiny because it applied to a broad cross-section of workers, rather than to specific professions.

According to a 2003 OECD survey of 25 industrialized countries, only Norwegian and Dutch employees worked less time each year than the French, who worked an average 1,431 hours. German workers put in 1,446 hours, British 1,673 hours, Americans 1,792 hours and Koreans 2,390 hours.

Last year, a parliamentary committee reported that the 35-hour week cost France more than $13 billion a year, casting doubt on a labor ministry study that suggested it had created 350,000 jobs between 1998 and 2002.

Still, many French workers are loath to give up their shorter hours, even for more cash. Some 56 percent of salaried employees oppose the government's plan, according to the CSA survey, while 36 percent approve.

On March 10, almost a million people took part in strikes and protests over the working time reform — as well as other threats to workers' benefits and public sector pay.

But Nicolas Sarkozy, who pushed hard for the law to be loosened while serving as finance minister last year and is expected to one day run for president, has no regrets.

"It's wonderful to see so many people marching to defend the jobs they already have, pushing aside so many others who would also like the chance to have a job," he said.

those lazy frenchies!

They're not lazy. You forget, France operates on a 19 hour clock.

I wonder if the 35 hours included, or excluded, the hours that people posted on message boards during on company time.

i'm not seeing the problem here. they tried something, it failed miserably so they go back to the old way, which is exactly the same as every other industrialized nation in the world. i work 40 hours a week, and would be pissed if i got cut back to 35

Now let's all bash George Bush and the state of the American economy.

that takes more than 35 hours a week. The administration made sure of that.

Americans don't work 40 hours a week anyway. pfffftttt.....

The guy in the cubicle across from me bills 20 to 25 hrs a week and still collects a full paycheck. My boss is a big pussy.

In the US the number of hours per week, while 40 is considered "full time", can vary greatly depending upon what industry you are in.

I know software engineers, quality assurance teams, marketing managers, and UI designers, all of whom are on salary, who have put in 60 hour work weeks for months at a time during the software development process. It didn't change the growth factor or the employement rate in their industry to work more hours any more than it would have to work less.

And how does the 35 hours framework translate to teachers and health care workers? How does it translate to food service and tourism? It certainly wouldn't seem to have any impact on banking, they have seemingly always had a shorter work week in the US than everyone else. "32" hours when I was a bank teller was considered "full time".

So, I don't understand how making the work week longer would at all translate into creating new jobs. It seems to be assumed that by extending the work week somehow some huge opportunity having previously been lost is suddenly going to spring forth?

Wouldn't developement of new technologies or expansion of companies into other areas of commerce be a more economically sound mechanism by which to grow the economy and lower unemployement?

.I'm really confused.



c-

I just wish I could work 4 ten hour days instead of 5 eight hour days. However I wouldn't want the gov't regulating that sort of thing.