PARIS: The head of France's governing party called Monday for a definitive end to France's 35-hour workweek - but within hours he was contradicted not only by the government but by President Nicolas Sarkozy himself. Ten years to the day after a Socialist government decided to shorten the workweek, the division at the top of the governing camp highlights how France's most disputed labor law continues to split the center-right. Rather than scrapping a law that Sarkozy once called a disaster, successive governments have preferred to tinker with costly overtime. So when the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement, Patrick Devedjian, announced Monday in unambiguous language that his party was "forcefully requesting the definitive dismantlement of the 35-hour week" and provisions to allow companies to negotiate their own work-time agreements, it did not take long for confusion and recriminations to spread through the ranks of the government.
PARIS: The head of France's governing party called Monday for a definitive end to France's 35-hour workweek - but within hours he was contradicted not only by the government but by President Nicolas Sarkozy himself.
Ten years to the day after a Socialist government decided to shorten the workweek, the division at the top of the governing camp highlights how France's most disputed labor law continues to split the center-right.
Rather than scrapping a law that Sarkozy once called a disaster, successive governments have preferred to tinker with costly overtime.
So when the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement, Patrick Devedjian, announced Monday in unambiguous language that his party was "forcefully requesting the definitive dismantlement of the 35-hour week" and provisions to allow companies to negotiate their own work-time agreements, it did not take long for confusion and recriminations to spread through the ranks of the government.
According to the Canard Enchaîné, Devedjian is slated to be kicked out of the UMP leadership by Sarkoztic ukase sometime very soon. Which has as much if not more to do with rivalries in the rich West Parisian conservative powerhouse département, the Hauts-de-Seine, as with anything else.
