Should Europe adopt the 35-hour week?

The French workforce has settled happily into a new 35-hour working week which gives people more free time with no reduction in salary.

The French economy appears not to have suffered, unemployment has fallen and the annual growth rate last year was 3.4% - one of the strongest in Europe.

But can the new system survive as the threat of a worldwide recession comes ever closer and European economies begin to feel the pinch?

Should the rest of Europe move to a 35-hour working week? Is it desirable and can it work?

For this Europewide debate Europe Today's Laurence Zavriew discussed the issue with Mike Emmott of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development here in London; and from Paris, Vincent Champin of the French Ministry of Employment and Solidarity:

This debate is now closed. Read a selection of your comments below.

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Your reaction

I also think we should cut the working week to 4 days

Matthew, England

Great idea! I also think we should cut the working week to 4 days. Some of the comments made by Stephen are laughable. If he wants to work 90 hours per week with hardly any holiday, that's up to him. Our lives are short enough anyway, and to spend so much of them working is just stupid. There's such an attitude that we all have to work ourselves into the ground. Some people seem to think it's wrong to want a balance of life! It's not.
Matthew, England

Another reason not to join the single currency - as such a policy without a corresponding cut in salary will surely have inflationary pressures, which will have to be borne by everyone else in the Euro currency zone.
Will Lever, UK

If you know your social history, they said that productivity would suffer at the beginning of last century, when workers were fighting for the 10 hour day. Productivity actually increased when they got the shorter hours.
Michael Turner, Canada

It's socialism, but what else is new? A company looking to locate a facility in one of the G7 countries would not pick France due to its restrictive work rules.
Tom, USA

It doesn't take an economic genius to realise that if we award ourselves very high salaries and working conditions compared to competing economies, we will lose out to them in the long term. If this trend continues I see more and more industrial activity transferring to lower cost economies. And then how will we pay for our lives of luxury?
Matt, France

GDP is not a measure of overall happiness

Kevin Brown, USA

Bravo to the French for having the nerve to implement such a boldly innovative approach to unemployment, and good luck to the rest of Europe in picking up on it. To all its critics, all I have to ask is: What exactly is the point of "progress", "growth", "market expansion", etc. if we no longer have any time to spend with our loved ones, our favourite pastimes or helping the less fortunate? What's all this technology the human race has acquired over the centuries good for, anyway, if we're too tired to enjoy it or put it to good use?

As the average numbers of hours worked here in the U.S. has increased as our standard of living has dropped, it seems clear that we Americans have adopted a very perverse definition of "prosperity". GDP is not a measure of overall happiness.
Kevin Brown, USA

Don't forget that France's 35 hour week hasn't come into force yet and won't until 1 January 2002. It will seriously damage French productivity, as part of the law is that people cannot have their pay reduced, meaning that for productivity to remain the same, they would have to do the same amount of work as before in the new and shorter amount of time. Also, French unemployment has stopped falling, and rose by 0.4% last month. With an economy as regulated as France's, even in the good times, unemployment will go no lower than about 8.5%, which was it's lowest point.
Andrew J Robson, France

Define a 40-hour week! As a poor soul with a salary, there is no overtime pay till 50 hours and when you only work 40 you don't get promoted. 40 hours does not include lunch. 40 hours does not include 10 hours of commuting. 40 hours does not include 75 hour weeks when the product doesn't come together quite right.

It took 5 years to get to 3 weeks vacation (with pager and cellphone). It will take 20 years with the company to get 4 years vacation but one tends to get laid off before then. (too old) I would kill for a real 40 hours and 1 month vacation. 35 hours? Not in my dreams.
L.L., USA

I imagine that it depends on what work you do, but personally I certainly do feel that shorter days would make me more productive. I work eight-hours days (lunch break not included) and I find it very difficult to come up with any fresh ideas during the last hour. As my task is basically hardware/software engineering, this time is lost, both for me and my employer. And at the end of the week I am far too tired to be creative.

Unfortunately, we won't see a 35-hour week anytime soon. The current fashion in economic thinking, as blown over from the USA, is that anything that is good for the workers must be bad for the economy, and anything that is good for the employers (assumed to be mutually exclusive) good for the economy. I don't think there is any serious economists who supports such crackpot theories, but economic policy is set by politicians, not economists.
Manu, Belgium

Stephen from Ireland/USA: Why does Europe have to justify generous holiday time and a shorter working week? Statistics shows the UK works the longest hours in Europe, yet is one of the least productive, and I know USA workers have paltry holiday entitlements. If continental Europe and France in-particular can have socially adaptive policies for workers and still have the high standard of living that they have, then surely that must be welcomed! I hope the EU takes the lead that France has shown. Workers unite!
Michael Kyne, United kingdom

Yes we can adopt the long overdue 35hr week. Longer hours means less productivity, more stress more "sickies". Let everyone work shorter hours, give the unemployed a chance and boost the GNP. Short-sighted employers will always say it will increase costs BUT, this isn't borne out in reality.
Frank O'Brien, England

In response to Stephen, I would like to say that being pampered is a good thing, reducing work is a good thing and the less time we spend striving for money the better. I also find it hard to understand what he means by "Europeans don't deserve a 35-hour week" as if we all have a certain amount of suffering that we all should endure. If a 35 hour week is fiscally possible surely it should be welcomed to leave people more free time to satisfy other aspects of their lives.
Tarek, NZ/UK/CH

Maybe all the Americans should stop complaining about what we have and start looking for it themselves!
John, Ireland, United States of Europe

I must be one of the few Americans who works a 35-hour week, and gets four weeks paid holiday. Compared with places I've worked with a 40-hour week, I notice no difference in productivity. In fact, I think we appreciate the balance we have between work and home and feel that much more willing to put in some extra effort to do our jobs well.
Michele, USA

I think Europe should adopt a 36-hour workweek as some companies do here in Romania. The workweek is done in 4 days yielding a three-day weekend. This 4-day workweek enables you to do schedule all your appointments during your extra day off (i.e. doctor's appointment). The workday is from 8am-6pm with one hour for lunch.
J Cetniku, Lizopizd, Romania

I think it's a great idea! Can we have the same annual leave as European countries too?
ALJ, England

It is funny to see that Western Europeans want to diminish their work week. Western Europe should take our Serbian example, with 50 percent unemployment, we all share common jobs, this way who ever works gives up time for those who don't. This is why I don't want to leave Serbia at all, since I agree we are poorer, but our lives in my opinion are better since we don't work very hard.
S. Duperosovic, Srbenavrbe, Serbia

What a great idea. The world of business is getting more and more hectic and demanding. We have to ease up somehow. Life isn't about how well your employer does - it's about your own quality of life. Not wanting to work a sixty-hour week isn't lazy, it is the sign of a balanced personality who wants to enjoy life. Companies will put pressure on us all to work long hours. In the absence of organised unions our only defence is the law.
Richard, UK

Any attempt by the French to dilute their productivity (that is, GDP per head) will always good for us, the competition. I hope they come up with many, many more ways to make us all more competitive!
Mark M. Newdick, US/UK

It didn't matter what you did in those hours as long as you were seen to be there

Jon Turner, France (ex-UK)

As a Brit working in France, I would have to say that I get as much if not more work done under the French regime than I did in the UK. The 35-hour working week isn't always applied as a 35 Hr week, but in my case (I work 8am-5pm) as an extra 1.5 days holiday per month. Over a year that is 18 days extra holiday. I found working in the UK a culture of working long hours. It didn't matter what you did in those hours as long as you were seen to be there. In general people were poorly organised and worked inefficiently - with the attitude that they could always work late to finish things.

The 35-hour week goes hand in hand with more efficient use of time. With my 43 days holiday a year, I can take days off as and when I want, and I retain my enthusiasm for work, I have far less "work fatigue". I am less tired, less stressed, and work more efficiently than I ever did in the UK. Yes we should follow the French, but only if the average person can be persuaded to make better use of their time.
Jon Turner, France (ex-UK)

If it worked for France, it should work for everybody. I personally would love to see a 35-hour work week, not that I think it'll happen in the U.S.
Morgan O'Conner, U.S.A.

Yes, provided that all other countries with whom we trade give their workers the same conditions. Otherwise goods and services will be outsourced to other countries in order to benefit from longer working hours.
Mark, England

Bertrand Russell wrote an excellent essay called "In Praise of Idleness" in which he points out that increases in productivity due to technological advances mean that the world could survive even if the working day was only four hours long. When productivity increases, it means that fewer hours of work are needed to produce the same output or profit. It would make sense, then that workers could work less hours for the same pay, at no cost to the company. What actually happens when productivity increases is that some workers are made redundant, while the rest keep working the same hours.

This way, the benefits of increased productivity go only to the managers, shareholders, and directors, who now pay less wages for the same output, while workers stay overworked or become unemployed. This is good for the economy, as the success of the British and American economies, where working long hours is the norm, show.
Ruadhan O'Flanagan, Ireland (living in US)

I think Europe should adopt similar policy as in Serbia. We have three hours of "siesta" time every afternoon and our working week is from 9 to 12 and 3 to 6 pm, 5 days a week. That is ideal. I call it the "work-play-work" process.
Sinisha P, Yugoslavija

The 35-hour week has many benefits for employees, like a balance between work and life and higher productivity per hour. Economically it helps boost the leisure industry and working people have time to spend money this leads to an exponential effect doing good to the entire economy.
B P, India

No, Europe should not. In Holland we have a 36 hour week and it doesn't work. People here still have to do as much work as when they had the 40 hour week, but in a shorter time- span
Bart Jan Teunisse, Netherlands

How typical, the socialists lounge around at a posh 35-hour week and 6-8 weeks paid holiday a year while North America and Asia carry the global economic burden. France's unemployment rate is at a massive 8.7% already. Germany's is heading up to 10%. Only the Celtic Tiger Ireland and the UK are respectable, an impressive 3.3 to 3.8%, and in my view the only EU countries who have "earned" a 35 hour work week.

Since Europe already leads the industrialized world in free time, vacation time, etc how can Europeans justify getting even more of a work gratuity? Many Europeans don't deserve a 35-hour week, quite honestly they're pampered, particularly those on the continent. Get the EU's collective unemployment rate down to that of the USA, Ireland, UK and Japan, that being below 5% and reduce the paid vacation allotment down to four weeks a year, and maybe then the EU can justify pressing ahead for a posh 35 hour work week - But they've got a long way to go!
Stephen, USA/Ireland

A 35-hr work week would have great advantages in the USA, especially if divided into 3-1/2 ten-hour days, allowing fore-week and later-week employment. Several advantages are obvious. 1. Manufacturers can get four times the production from the same equipment, running two ten-hour shifts per day (4 hours for maintenance). 2. A worker could live 300 miles from his job, living in a dormitory shared with others while working. 3. By scattering working hours around the lock, some of the gridlock traffic problems can be alleviated. 4. A worker made of iron could work two jobs, or work a part-time second job, or maintain a home craft shop.

5. In times of recession, a 35-hour work week could employ far more persons. 6. If production occurs during a 24-hour day, banks, stores, and schools would soon follow, allowing more intensive use of existing facilities. The same could be said of churches, which are empty much of the time. 7. By spreading workers over the countryside (many avoiding cities), some of the cities' pollution and crowding and traffic problems could be alleviated. 8. In the event of the unthinkable nuclear war, a dispersed population would be least affected by nuclear bombs. 9. Cities could be smaller, clustered around one or a few industries which draw their employment from a 300-mile radius. This has its advantage, too, in that the worker has a choice of several directions and several industries in which to seek employment.
Don Hook, USA

I would think that it would harm the competitiveness of European businesses. Since workers typically receive benefits in addition to pay, it is more costly to have 10 employees working 35 hours per week than to have 9 employees working 40 hours per week. Other nations including the United States will not adopt a lower working week in the near future.
Daniel Smith, United States