French people will find it easier to buy a fresh baguette and a bouquet of flowers on Labour Day after the government gave such shops a rare dispensation to stay open on a national holiday long seen as sacrosanct.
The relatively minor shift to strict labour rules in France, which ban employers from requiring staff to work on May 1st, follows weeks of complaints from labour unions hostile to any erosion of workers’ rights.
At the helm of a fragile minority government, prime minister Sébastien Lecornu caved in to trade unions’ demands and withdrew a broader reform pushed by his own centrist lawmakers that would have allowed more types of businesses to remain open.
Instead, he decreed that only independent bakeries and flower shops could remain open this year – two sectors that are dear to the French. Florists have long said they are “essential” given the tradition of giving out sprigs of lily of the valley on May 1st as a token of good luck.
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Nora Bensaid, the owner of a flower shop in Montmartre, said she usually opened on May Day anyway, and that she was happy not to have to fear being fined this year. Three of her five staff members would work and be paid double. “It is always a good day of sales for us since people are feeling the spring coming,” she says.
In France, May 1st is the only one of 11 national holidays on which the law says companies or establishments cannot require staff to work, unless they are in a sector that “by reason of the nature of their activity, cannot interrupt work”. But the law never spelt out what businesses were covered, leaving ambiguity that means some places remain open despite the risk of fines.
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Any staff member who works must do so on a voluntary basis and be paid double; business owners are free to work as they choose.
In practice, hospital staff and police officers stay on duty, while some restaurants, cafes and cinemas rely on the legal grey area to remain open – a classic example of how French people often ignore regulations they see as too onerous or baroque. Some big supermarket chains have also begun to open with skeleton security staff and automatic checkout lines.
Bakeries have been a flashpoint for several years, especially after the owner of a chain called Bo & Mie was fined almost €80,000.
Dominique Anract, who heads a trade group of bakeries, justified the exception granted to purveyors of the beloved baguette, tartes and croissants. “We do not force anyone to work, and people want their fresh-baked goods,” he says, likening the sales on May 1st to a “mini-Christmas”.
Nearly all European countries declare Labour Day a public holiday, but France has the most restrictive regime for working on the day.
Unions will ensure there is no backsliding to make May 1st a day like any other, says Denis Gravouil, a leader of the hard-left CGT union. As every year, unions will hold marches across the country on Friday to celebrate hard-fought workers’ rights.
“The fight over May 1st is symbolic of how the government wants to expand working days and hours, so as to favour consumption at all costs,” Gravouil said. “But it is also important for people to just take a break, enjoy their families, go to a park and not to be in capitalist mode at all times.”
Lecornu’s backtracking from a broader reform underlines the difficulty any French government faces when trying to coax people to work more or retire later.
Employment has risen by some 1.85 million in France since the end of 2019, much faster than in neighbouring Germany. Yet an employment rate of 59.9 per cent for 15- to 74-year-olds remains far lower than Germany’s 67.8 per cent rate for the same age group, reflecting France’s earlier retirement age and how young people start working later than elsewhere.
Boosting both the employment rate and working hours would help increase tax revenues and begin to close a yawning deficit that stood at 5.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of last year. The French government has been trying to cut spending, but given that president Emmanuel Macron only has a year left on his term, it has become impossible to pass any structural reforms.
Instead the government’s deficit cutting has relied largely on tax hikes on businesses and households.
Economists say an improvement driven by Macron’s labour market reforms, tax cuts and deregulation in his first term has petered out in the face of political paralysis, making France a far less attractive place to invest.
“The period of Macron ‘fixing’ France, that is over,” says Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg, adding that “fear of what comes after Macron” is now keeping hiring just as subdued in France as in Germany. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
