The 35-hour workweek is a labour reform policy adopted in France in February 2000, under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Plural Left government.
The previous legal working week was 39 hours, established by President François Mitterrand, also a member of the Socialist Party.
The 35-hour working week had been on the Socialist Party's 1981 electoral program, titled 110 Propositions for France, but was not pursued because of the poor state of the economy.
The reform's aim is primarily to lower the unemployment rate, then at a record high of 12.5%,[2] by encouraging the creation of jobs with work sharing.
It did so by offering a reduced payroll tax for all businesses that lowered their current employees' working hours and hired additional workers before January 2000.
[2] Businesses were required to sign an agreement with unions to bargain over the hourly wage increase, to make up for the potential loss of income by the employees' decreasing work time.
[1] The Raffarin government, some members of which were vocal critics of the law, gradually pushed for further relaxation of the legal working time requirements.
He found that capital operating time has not decreased in shift-work firms, because they responded by increasing the intensity of night-shift work and adding some additional overtime.