French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin campaigned for the measure under the slogan “earn more by working more.”

“In allowing citizens to determine their working time, we are giving those people an extra freedom, ” said Herve Noveilli, a member of parliament from the governing Union for a Popular Movement party, and co-author of the law. Union leaders say the reform would in fact force workers to work more hours while cutting their benefits. Over the last year bosses in France as well as Germany have used the threat of layoffs to convince workers to accept contracts with longer workweeks without a raise in pay.

The revisions to the 35-hour law would free up private companies to arrange their own overtime deals with workers, up to the 48-hour workweek limit set by the European Union. Employees would also be “encouraged” to trade in to the company the holiday time earned for working extra hours in exchange for cash payments, job training, or early retirement. The standard workweek would remain at 35 hours for public sector workers.

“This will mean the end of the shortened working time. It means management will decide the working time, not the employees,” Dominique Barbet, chief economist at the BNP Paribas bank, told the BBC.

The vote in the lower house of parliament was followed by a series of marches and rallies February 5 organized by four of France’s main trade union federations. Between 300,000 and 500,000 people participated in these demonstrations in several cities across the country, Bloomberg News reported.

The 35-hour workweek was won in 1998 as a concession from the Socialist Party government of Lionel Jospin after mobilizations of tens of thousands of working people demanding government relief and jobs. The unemployment rate at the time had hit a record high of 12.4 percent. Several weeks of protests occurred throughout France, and workers occupied state unemployment offices, schools, and financial institutions. Large demonstrations were organized by the major unions and in early December of that year a weeklong strike by maritime workers at the Sociéte de Navigation Corse-Méditerranée in Marseille shut down the state-owned passenger and freight services.

The central demands of the demonstrators were a raise in employment benefits and the minimum wage, an immediate cash payment to ease the conditions of the unemployed, and a shortened workweek to increase jobs. Jospin sent riot cops to eject workers from the government buildings they were occupying. In the end, the Jospin government agreed to raise unemployment benefits by 10 percent and enact a 35-hour work week.

The shortened workweek was not implemented until two years later, and then watered down soon afterward. In 2003, the maximum number of overtime hours employees could work per year was raised from 130 to 180. In December of last year, Raffarin raised the limit again to 220 hours per worker per year.

France has the third-largest economy in Europe, and second largest in the euro zone countries. It currently has an unemployment rate of 9.9 percent, according to Bloomberg. Prime Minister Raffarin and other representatives of the French capitalist class have blamed the 35-hour week for France’s increasing unemployment and a lack of “work ethic.”

Facing increased inter-imperialist competition for markets and resources, the French rulers are demanding employees work longer hours and are imposing speed-up on the job. Emphasizing an nationalist economic framework, Raffarin said the 35-hour week was why “French” jobs and industries had relocated overseas. France’s finance minister said the shortened workweek cost “the country” 10 billion euros.

The bosses’ proposed solution to their economic crisis includes tax breaks to the wealthy to “create jobs.” According to a February 18 Associated Press dispatch, French labor minister Jean-Louis Borloo “unveiled a plan to create up to 500,000 new jobs in the service sector with tax breaks designed to encourage households to employ care workers and domestic staff.”  
 
 
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