France reign’s to having one of the shortest work hour weeks in the world has come to an end after a new ruling was passed by the French senate that allows companies to introduce longer working hours.

However, before the new working hours is implemented, the employers and employees will need to negotiate and come to an agreement.

France instituted a 35-hour work week policy in 1998, cutting it off from 39-40 hours, instantly making the country to have the shortest work week in the Europe, until today. With shorter working hours, employers would have to hire more workers to maintain or increase their business productivity.

Between 1998 and 2002, thanks to this new policy, more than 300,000 thousand jobs were created, reducing the high employment rate. The country has always been an envy of many others, with some of them satirically labeling them as the “lazy French”.

However, the trend of job creation stopped after on, and the government of France, under the premiership of Nicolas Sarkozy, came to realization that the policy now had not been producing the number of jobs it was supposed to do. On top of that, other developed nations, including United Kingdom and United States, show the trend of an increase in terms of hours worked by the employees.

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