The Case for a Four Day Week by Aidan Harper & Alfie Stirling & Anna Coote

Author:Aidan Harper & Alfie Stirling & Anna Coote [Harper, Aidan & Stirling, Alfie & Coote, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509539666
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2020-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

Figure 2: Average annual hours actually worked per worker, 1990–2018, selected countries and OECD average.

Source: OECD https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AVE_HRS

Among workers whose hours had been reduced by the Aubry legislation, well over half responded positively when asked if it had made it easier to combine family and working life. This held true for different types of work and salary levels, and for men as well as for women.8 The 35-hour week was most consistently popular among parents of young children.

Workplace agreements suited some workers better than others. In firms where there was already a positive attitude to work–life balance, workers found the reduction in hours to be more beneficial – possibly because employers were more willing to realize the purpose, rather than just the letter, of the law. Elsewhere, however, many found that their work intensified, especially where additional workers were not recruited, and this made their lives more stressful. In the wake of the second Aubry law, people found they had less control over their working time, which had a negative impact on the quality of their lives. This loss of control eroded support among workers for reduced hours.

A more positive effect was that newly mobilized structures for collective bargaining tended to impede attempts to roll back the laws after 2002. The fact that the Aubry legislation had promoted local agreements meant that a great many workplace organizations negotiated reduced working hours – and in doing so developed a sense of investment in them.

For all Sarkozy’s efforts, and in spite of cooling enthusiasm on the political left, the 35-hour week has not actually been abolished. It is still officially the ‘norm’, adhered to by many French employers and workers, although more now work longer hours. It has been estimated that, between 1998 and 2008, ‘the overall net effect of the statutory 35-hour limit amounted to roughly 1.5 hours per week’. This was well below the original goal, but ‘the largest drop in Western Europe in this time period’.9 French workers currently put in fewer hours per year on average than all but four OECD countries (Germany, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands).

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