After their 10 October 1997 conference on employment, pay and working time, employers, trade unions and the government are reflecting on the implementation of the Prime Minister's decisions and on ways to continue their dialogue.
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After their 10 October 1997 conference on employment, pay and working time, employers, trade unions and the government are reflecting on the implementation of the Prime Minister's decisions and on ways to continue their dialogue.
Following the tripartite conference on employment, pay and working time held on 10 October 1997, at which the Prime Minister announced plans to legislate for a 35-hour working week (FR9710169F), Jean Gandois resigned from his post as chair of the CNPF employers' confederation. The resignation provoked varied reactions on the part of trade unions, which fear a "toughening" of the employers' stance during the coming months, and above all the "breaking off of dialogue between employers and unions "referred to by the "bosses' boss" during the press conference in which he explained his reasons for leaving. The Government's plan - an "incentive" law to be enacted in 1998, the opening of talks between employers and unions, an assessment of advances made towards the 35-hour week in 1999, and the implementation of the law relating to this in 2000 - hinges on the progression of negotiations between employers and unions. However, this may well be compromised.
Louis Viannet, general secretary of the CGT union confederation, considers "that the influence of CNPF hard-liners will now be strengthened", and calls for a greater degree of "workers' mobilisation", Nicole Notat, CFDT general secretary "would like to think that the CNPF will be able to remain the negotiating partner it ought to be today", while Alain Deleu, director of the CFTC, criticises "a conception of industrial relations in which power relations play an excessive role".
On the employers' side, varying attitudes can de detected. Some, like Denis Kessler, the deputy director of CNPF responsible for economic affairs, question the notion of joint representation (the so-called parity principle) - "the successes and failures of joint representation must be looked at carefully after 50 years of operation, in the light of the choices being made in other countries" (quoted in Le Monde on 22 October 1997) - and claim that state interference makes such joint representation meaningless. However, other employer representatives, like Arnaud Leenhard, the president of the UIMM (Union des Industries métallurgiques et minières, Union of metallurgical and mining industries) metalworking and mining federation, think that "a lot depends on what the bill contains" (Les Echos, 17-18 October 1997). Yet none of the employers' leaders foresee national sectoral negotiations on the 35-hour week.
Martine Aubry, Minister for Employment and Solidarity, indicated on 20 October that the threshold workforce size of the businesses to which the 35-hour week would apply initially could be 20 or 25 employees, rather than the 10 employees announced the Prime Minister during the 10 October conference. She thinks the negotiations will involve companies which "have the time and scope necessary for negotiation, in the conditions most appropriate to their situation".
Il-Eurofound jirrakkomanda li din il-pubblikazzjoni tiġi kkwotata kif ġej.
Eurofound (1997), The 35-hour week: post-conference reactions, article.
