Big news in France, on Wednesday evening the government voted to eliminate the 35-hour work week. Currently we are required to work 218 days per year, and with this law the new minimum will be 235. And now everyone is talking about those 17 extra days.
French holiday time has always been a standard 5 weeks. But with the 35-hour work week, any time worked over 35 hours would go toward additional holiday. This extra time is called RTT. When the socialists implemented the 35-hour work week about 10 years ago, the idea was that with all this holiday time, more people would be needed, and the unemployment issues would be relieved.
Well, that was the theory anyway. Most companies, like mine and David's both, assume that you are going to work the standard 40 hour week (never mind if you work more). So when you sign your contract, the RTT is already added. I have 10 RTT days, but 7 of them are "collectif", which means that the company or the unions mandate what days we will be taking for RTT. For example, if a national holiday falls on a Thursday, we'll often have the Friday as a RTT collectif. The week of Christmas - which is usually automatically off in the US - is collectif.
With the new law the RTT will be eliminated. Of course, that's only 10 days, so the new theory floating around the office is that the other 7 days will come from holidays. "We could be required to work on May 1st!" one of my colleagues declared indignantly. I'm still trying to understand why we get May 1 off to begin with, but regardless of the holiday, anyone would be bummed out about losing 17 days of vacation.
The new law is optional for companies, and if they require us to work for the extra 17 days I've heard that we'll get raises. Of course, David and I can't find any proof of that in the few English-language articles we've read on the topic. The idea is that we'll be making more money, which will give us more spending power, which will drive the price of homes down (still trying to work that one out as well). It's all part of Sarkozy's big plan.
Surprisingly, everything is set to go down by early September. To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed that there haven't been riots and strikes in response to the decision. Whatever happened to the French obsession with vacation?
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