We must work more: that is the categorical statement from the bosses and the bourgeois politicians. In his presidential address of November 9, 2021, French president Emmanuel Macron, for instance, asserted that “it is through work, and through more work, that we will be able to preserve our social model.”
Macron is talking about simply extending the retirement age and people’s working hours. But others are more specific: they want to increase weekly working time by relaxing the law, adopted in France in February 2000, that set 35 hours as the standard legal limit for a workweek and made anything above that overtime. Take, for example, Xavier Bertrand — a potential right-wing presidential candidate and former minister of Labor, Employment, and Health who now heads the regional council of Hauts-de-France. He wants to go back to the old 39-hour law to “liberate” working time, which has been the leitmotiv of the right for a long time. In other words, the Right wants to abolish the rules set by the law, giving companies free rein and tipping the relationship of forces unfavorably against workers. Right-wing stalwart Marine Le Pen of the National Rally also favors a switch back to 39 hours, through sector-by-sector agreements.
In short, it’s about getting employees to work more but earn less.
Meanwhile, there is a debate over changing the 35-hour law to 32 hours. On the Left, a shift to 32 hours is seen as a way to create jobs. Among others, the CGT trade union confederation,...
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