Word: houres
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...case, the new law means the de facto death of the 35-hour week introduced in 1998 with great fanfare and considerable controversy by the Socialist government of the day. The measure was designed to stimulate job creation by cutting up the pie of available work into smaller pieces. Socialists claimed the creation of 350,000 new posts in its first five years; similar numbers were provided by independent economists and organizations monitoring labor activity. However, conservatives have consistently accused the law of shackling French businesses and undermining economic growth. They've also noted that state subsidies softening the impact...
...Union for Popular Majority party (UMP). "It's a remarkable advance for the economy." France's Labor Minister, Xavier Bertrand, the bill's author, hailed an "historic" revision of a law conceived by the country's "archaic" left, now in opposition. "It's the end of the imposed 35-hour week," he crowed...
...Bertrand's own wording belied a glaring incongruity in the law: while it allows employers to demand that workers spend more time at work, 35 hours remains the reference length of the French workweek. That's a smart move, since polls show the French are fond of the 35-hour week, and quashing it outright could prove unpopular...
...Sarkozy's previous efforts to keep employees on the job longer relied on making overtime pay less costly to businesses and more profitable to workers. But that softer pitch was never popular with government officials and UMP members who saw the 35-hour week as an ideological red flag...
...lets companies ignore the nominal 35-hour maximum and negotiate - or impose - longer hours for staffers. In doing so, bosses will no longer have to worry about compensating extra time with days off, as they were previously obliged to do to keep any worker's average workweek over the year within the 35-hour limit. What's more, overtime work will no longer come attached to a 25% bonus, but with one as low as 10%, to be determined through negotiation...