FRANCE: The French left and right have lined up for an old-fashioned ideological battle over the 35-hour working week, in a three-day debate in the National Assembly to end tomorrow.
The "Aubry laws" of 1998 and 2000 were emblematic of the socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin's five-year term. Two socialist finance ministers criticised the reduction of the legal working week from 39 hours, and many socialists believe it cost them the 2002 elections.
Yet this week, the socialists are fighting to defend the Aubry laws, proposing more than 100 doomed amendments to the right's draft law on "changes in working time". The right-wing government's decision to "relax" the law so hated by the business managers' group MEDEF has united socialists, communists and greens as nothing else has in recent years.
Ms Martine Aubry, who as minister for social affairs pushed through the legislation, lost her seat in 2002 and will not be in the Assembly to defend the law that bears her name.
"They are going to give the coup de grâce to the 35 hours, in an authoritarian way, without consultation," Ms Aubry told a socialist meeting on Sunday. "We are going 40 or 50 years backwards."
With the socialists deeply divided over the European constitutional treaty, the 35-hour week provides a much needed common cause. Although the draft law will affect only the private sector, it was seized upon by public-sector workers and civil servants as a pretext for a series of strikes in January. The protest will culminate in mass street demonstrations on Saturday.
None of which will prevent the draft law being passed by the right's two-thirds majority in the National Assembly on February 8th. It will be voted on in the Senate next month, and should take effect in the autumn.
Economic liberals, including the head of the UMP, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, wanted to abrogate the Aubry laws altogether, but President Jacques Chirac said the 35-hour week was an acquis social that could not be reversed.
The result is an eight-page draft law that the right claims will give French people the option to "work more to earn more". But according to an opinion poll published by the Journal du Dimanche, most French people don't want to work more; 77 per cent said they wanted to maintain their present working hours. Only 18 per cent said they wanted to work more.
Statistics from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development show the French work some of the shortest hours in the developed world: 1,453 hours per year, compared to 1,613 hours for the average Irish person or 1,792 for an American.
Officially, the working week will still be 35 hours long. But the new law will extend use of the "Time Savings Account". Instead of enjoying their "RTT" (reductions in working time) and holidays, employees can cash them in. The only restrictions on overtime are that everyone take at least four weeks of paid holidays, and that no one works more than 48 hours per week.
The right claims that overtime will be voluntary. The left argues that with 10 per cent unemployment, employees will have no choice but to please their bosses.
Presenting the law yesterday, the UMP deputy Pierre Morange quoted a report on the 35-hour week by the former head of the IMF, Mr Michel Camdessus, who wrote: "By definition, the less we work, the less we produce. Countries with the longest working hours are also those in which unemployment is lowest."