The French miracle: a shorter week, more jobs and men doing the
ironing
Official study finds that France's 35-hour week has boosted the economy
and proved a hit with both employees and their bosses
By John Lichfield in Paris
19 June 2001
The French worker, The British worker
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.
In the meantime, the 35-hour experiment had started to attract admiring
glances from across the Channel.
Last week, the Industrial Society, a think-tank with broadly Blairist
views, painted a mostly positive picture of the reduction in working time
in France. By flying in the face of "Anglo-Saxon economic orthodoxy", the
French seem to be winning the battle over how to give employees a better
balance between work and private life, the report said. "The French seem
to be throwing away the textbook of labour market policies," said the
report's author, the economist Charlotte Thorne. "If the French experiment
works then the UK Government may be forced to look at France rather than
the US for new ideas about reforming the jobs market.
"Britain is still in the mind-set that we have to work incredibly long
hours ...Practically, there is no reason why we shouldn't have a 35-hour
week here, but culturally we are a million miles away."
In truth, 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 Rgisse 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
Bnedicte 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."
Bnedicte Rifai, 28, is a junior financial analyst with the French
electricity board, Electricit 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."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=78940
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