Metalworking working time agreement will not be extended

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In October 1998, France's Minister of Employment and Solidarity indicated that she was refusing to extend to the whole sector a controversial agreement on the implementation of the 35-hour working week in the metalworking industry.

The Minister of Employment and Solidarity, Martine Aubry, has indicated that she is refusing to extend the controversial metalworking industry agreement on the implementation of the new law on the 35-hour working week (FR9806113F). The agreement had been signed on 28 July 1998 (FR9808129F) by the Union of Metallurgy and Mining Industries (Union des industries métallurgiques et minières, UIMM) and the CFTC, CFE-CGC and CGT-FO trade unions. However, the deal was heavily criticised by non-signatory unions - CGT and CFDT- as evading the spirit and objective of the 35-hour week law, creating no jobs, and not actually reducing the length of working time. Ms Aubry described it as "a 'theoretical' agreement, a kind of non-agreement".

To be applicable to all companies in a given sector, a national agreement must be officially extended by the Minister of Employment and Solidarity. When asked in October 1998 during a debate in Parliament about her intentions regarding this issue, Ms Aubry stated that the metalworking accord "is not the kind of agreement we wish to see concluded. That is why it will not be extended".

Employers' leaders, like those unions that signed the metalworking agreement, have condemned this stance. On the same day as the Minister made her statement, UIMM lodged an application for extension "as soon as the necessary legislative modifications have taken place", which means as soon as the second law on the 35-hour week has been adopted in 1999. For the signatories, "this agreement, signed by three representative trade union organisations, satisfies the demands of the government, which wanted the ways in which working time was to be reduced to be adapted to the needs of businesses and to employees' aspirations ... Its extension until 1 January 2000 will seal the continuity of collective bargaining in metalworking.".

For their part, CFDT and CGT, which had lobbied the government to refuse to extend the agreement, received the Minister's decision very favourably.