AN UNUSUAL sight greeted tourists and locals alike in the French capital this week as a thousand business executives, all smartly dressed in black suits as if attending a funeral, gathered near the Senate on the Left Bank to protest against the demise of the country's famous 35-hour week.
Waving banners with slogans like "There is life after work" and "I refuse to give my life to shareholders," members of two white-collar unions expressed their anger over plans by the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to ditch the ten-year experiment that
handed French employees the most advantageous working hours in Europe.
The new law, approved late on Wednesday by the Senate, the upper house which is dominated by Mr Sarkozy's conservative UMP party, retains the legal limit on working hours but allows companies to negotiate opt-outs with employees.
It also allows firms to increase the maximum number of working days for white-collar workers to 235 per year from the current 218.
"If I'm forced to work 235 days, my personal life will suffer," said demonstrator Arnaud de la Bergerie, a 27-year-old mechanical engineer. "We'll have more pay but less time to spend our salary."
Although Mr Sarkozy has not abolished the 35-hour week, his new law has effectively brought it to an end by giving employers more latitude to extend working hours.
Under the new law, it is executives who will be the biggest losers. Under the old rules, employees who worked overtime were able to exchange the extra hours worked for days off.
Company executives, who tended to put in the most overtime, benefited most from this scheme. Mr Sarkozy's determination to extend the working week spells the end of all those long weekends for the country's managers.
Thus on Wednesday, the executives even out-numbered the blue-collar protesters marching under the red banner of the Communist-led CGT, leading political observers to note that the government had profoundly underestimated the extent to which white-collar workers were attached to the 35-hour week.
Mr Sarkozy branded the 35-hour week an economic mistake and has blamed it for damaging the competitiveness of the French economy.
Introduced ten years ago by the then Socialist employment minister Martine Aubry, the 35-hour week was aimed at cutting the high unemployment rate in France, then close to 10 per cent. While it was credited with creating some 350,000 new jobs between 1998 and 2002, it cost the state billions of euros in aid to companies.
However, opinion polls show that the majority of French people still support the 35- hour week as a progressive move.
The new measures – which allow individual firms to agree a maximum number of working days, overtime and time off in lieu directly with staff – are expected to come into force at the end of August.
"Companies will at last be able to operate a management policy based on a secure legal framework. It's a remarkable advance for the economy," said Daniele Giazzi of the UMP.
Marc Touati, head of economic research at Paris-based brokerage Global Equities was more sceptical. "In theory it's the end of the 35-hour work week, but in practice it will take a while longer," he said.
Since the new hours are to be negotiated on a company-by-company basis, "you can't expect it to have a strong impact on French growth" in the short term, he added.
The reform was approved earlier this month by the National Assembly – the lower house of the French parliament – and was passed by the Senate late on Wednesday.
"At last we are getting out of the 35-hour week," said Mr Sarkozy's loyal lieutenant, the labour minister Xavier Bertrand, after the vote.
Opposition Socialists and the unions oppose the reform, with the latter saying the new measures will mainly affect smaller and medium-sized firms.
"In the big companies, no-one wants to renegotiate the 35 hours and reopen Pandora's Box," said Philippe Jaeger, of managers' union CFE-CGC.
BACKGROUNDTHE 35-hour working week, introduced a decade ago, has been very popular in France, Europe's holiday champion with 37 days of paid leave a year, compared with 27 in Germany.
The new law allows individual companies or sectors to set a maximum number of days an employee has to work in a year and agree the number of overtime hours, as well as how much time an employee can take off in compensation.
In theory, it could allow companies to demand staff work a maximum of 235 days a year, instead of the current maximum of 218, leaving only 52 weekends, 25 days' holiday and the 1 May holiday as guaranteed non-working days.
In practice, unions believe the measures will mainly affect smaller companies.
"In big companies, no-one wants to renegotiate the 35 hours and re-open Pandora's Box," said Philippe Jaeger, president of the chemical industry section of the CFE-CGC union. "But in the small and mid-sized firms, it will be different."
