Posted
22nd June 2001
French Shorter Longer
France's 35-hour week has boosted the economy and proved a hit
with both employees and their bosses. Everybody else in the
global economy has trickle down stress from overwork in the
drive to be the cheapest and `compete'. The French have stuck
to their culture, making a huge contribution to history and
the future - Le dulce de vive, not the sweet life, the sweetness
of life. Madame Niki, a hairdresser in the 17th arrondissement
of Paris, used to dread Friday evenings. "Everyone wanted to
have their hair done before they left for the weekend," she
said. "Now I close down most Fridays. There is no business.
They all come on Thursdays instead." The reason for the change
is simple, Madame Niki says. The 35-hour week allows a large
part of the Parisian office and shop working population to take
an extra day off. France's experiment with a state-imposed,
shorter working week ‚ mocked by the workaholic and market-driven
British and Americans three years ago ‚ is beginning to alter
the country's rigid social patterns.
Weekends
now start on Thursdays or end on Tuesdays; many younger, working
mothers choose to stay at home on Wednesdays, when French children
are traditionally off school. Middle-range French executives,
on a 1,600-hour working year, find that they have an average
of two weeks' extra holiday (on top of the six weeks they already
had). Leisure and DIY sales are booming. There is even anecdotal
evidence that French male, blue-collar workers are doing the
midweek shopping; or learning how the iron works. The law, pushed
through by the former employment minister Martine Aubry, already
applies to six million employees in France, just over half the
workforce. Next year, small companies with up to 20 workers
will be given shorter working hours for the first time. A number
of categories ‚ including senior business executives, doctors,
lawyers, journalists and soldiers ‚ are exempted. But what effect
is all this having on the French economy? And French unemployment
(which was the whole point of a shorter week in the first place)?
An official report published yesterday said that the mandatory
35-hour week, and its voluntary predecessor, had created 285,000
jobs in the past five years. By the time the law applies fully
to smaller companies in 2003, it should have created 500,000
jobs, the report by Le Plan, the French state's strategic planning
body, said. This is far fewer than the 700,000 new jobs forecast
by Lionel Jospin's centre-left coalition government when it
came to power, promising a statutory 35-hour week, four years
ago this month. It is, though, by no means the calamity forecast
by business leaders and orthodox market economists ‚ both French
and Anglo-Saxon.
The principle of a state-imposed reduction in the working week
‚ from 39 hours to 35, without a reduction in wages ‚ would
be ruinous to French competitiveness, they said. It would discourage
foreign investment. It would increase taxes and social charges
because the government would have to compensate employers. It
would destroy more jobs than it created. None of that has happened,
yet. French unemployment has fallen from 12.6 per cent in June
1997 to 8.5 per cent this month, the lowest figure for 18 years.
Almost one percentage point of this reduction should be attributed
directly to jobs created by the reduction of the working week,
according to yesterday's report. Perhaps more important still,
it says that the shorter working week has helped to dispel the
atmosphere of "all-encompassing pessimism" which gripped France
in the mid-1990s. It has increased consumer confidence and consumer
spending ‚ boosting rather than crippling the French economy.
Foreign investment in France is booming. Social charges on employers
have not been increased so far but a potentially damaging row
is still in progress on how to pay the £1.5bn (at least) unbudgeted,
extra annual cost of subsidising companies who have switched
to the shorter week. The effects of the 35-hour week in France
can be difficult to pin down. Some business leaders point out
that negotiations on reducing working time have permitted companies
to scrape away years of accumulated restrictive practices. In
return for shorter, annual hours, workers have agreed to more
flexible hours; to work longer days or to come into the office
or factory on weekends; even, miraculously, to work during the
month of August. The result has been a windfall of productivity.
The
negotiations have also forced businesses to think again about
who they employ and why. The result, according to RÈgisse Versaeud,
head of the insurance services sector of the CFDT trades union
federation, is that some of his members complain that they are
being made to work too hard when they are at the office. "Overall,
the response from members is that they approve of the changes
but I think employers have, in some cases, taken the opportunity
to load too many tasks on individuals. "Something like 2,800
new jobs have been created in insurance offices by the 35-hour
law in the last three years but we think the figure could still
be even higher." The government is having difficulty in making
its own bill add up. The cost of subsidising employers who created
new jobs was to be borne by lower unemployment payments, the
existing social security budget and extra taxes on alcohol and
tobacco. The Jospin government now faces a shortfall of at least
£1.5bn a year, which it proposes to take from a large, but possibly
temporary, surplus in the social security (health and pensions)
budget. In the longer term, employers protest, that means they
may be forced to pay for their own subsidies. In the meantime,
the government could be said to be, in effect, "buying" the
new jobs. The net cost to the French treasury of subsidising
employers shifting to a 35-hour week is estimated in yesterday's
report by Le Plan at £4,600 per new job. Orthodox economists
might argue that the money might have been better used on reducing
business taxes ‚ or building more TGV lines. At a social level,
the 35-hour week is already a great success and will be one
of Mr Jospin's trump cards in the presidential elections next
year. President Jacques Chirac, his principal rival, criticised
the idea as "ideologically obsolete". Two-thirds of people on
a shorter week say that it has improved their lives. Working
women, especially, say that a four-day week, or shorter working
day, has made their lives tolerable for the first time. Madame
Niki in the hairdressing salon in the 17th arrondissement now
has most Fridays off, as do her clients. The concentration of
her trade on fewer days has also meant that she did not replace
her assistant when she left last year. Mark that down for one
job lost by the 35-hour week.
The French worker BÈnedicte Rifai:
"Fantastic, incredible, a complete change in the way I live.
I see my small daughter for an extra day each week and my wages
are virtually the same."
BÈnedicte Rifai, 28, is a junior financial analyst with the
French electricity board, ElectricitÈ de France, which also
owns the London Electricity Board. Since the introduction of
the 35-hour working week ‚ or technically speaking, a 1,600-hour
year ‚ at EDF last year, Ms Rifai has worked a four-day week.
She still earns £27,000 a year, only slightly less than her
job commanded when it was spread over five days. "We can choose
ourselves, more or less, how to work the hours," she said. "Some
people go home at three in the afternoon every day. Some people
take longer holidays. Working mothers, like me, often choose
to take Wednesdays off, because many schools in France are closed
at least half the day. It means I can save on child-minding
costs and spend a whole extra day with my daughter. It's difficult
now to remember how people coped with a full five-day week.
"I used to work in New York and I've seen the other side of
the coin ‚ long days and only two weeks' holidays. I think our
way is healthier and more civilised and, in the end, good for
the company too. The employees can concentrate when they are
at the job."
The British worker Lucy Finn:
She
typically works a 40 to 45-hour week as a human resources manager
for London Electricity and is responsible for the recruitment,
development and retention of 1,000 members of staff and heads
a team of five at the company's central London headquarters.
Mrs Finn, 28, works a five-day week but has a lot of flexibility
over when she arrives at the office and when she leaves, depending
on the daily workload. "My job is fairly flexible. Some weeks
I am in at 8am and out at 6pm, but other days I manage to do
9am to 5.30pm. If I work long hours, it is recognised and I
can make up for it." Shehas worked for London Electricity for
three years, is married and has no children. As a junior executive,
she feels her £34,000 salary, holiday entitlement and other
benefits make up for working longer than her French counterparts.
She
agrees Britain has a long-hours culture, but says firms have
become more flexible. She does not hanker after a 35-hour week.
"I think some of the salaries in France are a bit lower. There
are also cultural differences. They have a different way of
life. It is difficult to say what works in one country should
work in another.".
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