Social regulations and firms behaviour:
the execution of the January 1982 decision about the
39 hour work week and the fifth week of holidays
with pay,
by Michel Pépin, Dominique Tonneau.
This study follows a research dealing with the way companies behave when working time decreases, and begun in 1981 among a sample of 20, from various characteristics ; then the logical attitudes they foreplan- ned had been analysed.
This second part of the study uses the same sample to observe the way the ordinances of January 1982 were really implemented, with a special focus on the 39 hours week and the 5 th holiday week. Reducing the legal working time brought, in a vast majority, a similar decreasing of the real working-time, which took various forms.
As to the economical point of view, the ordinances seemed to have very little effect: few consequences on activity, whatever was feared, but also few employment creations. For the greatest number of these companies, what we called the logic of productivity in our previous study was adopted, and it allowed the working time reductions to come out with nearly no cost, although the salaries were as a rule totally compensated.
Yet, ordinances had indirect effects that should be considered if working- time reducing should be carried on Social partners had to learn once more about the way working-time is technically detailed in the juridical dispositions: definition and reckoning of the working-time, of the vacation rights...
The importance given to these problems may in a way explain the disillusion that came out here and there when working-time was reduced. But, in the same time, the discussions in many companies, were led on a more general basis, and allowed the connexions between working-time, organisation, employment and efficiency to be brought into light As a result, this mass experience might be used as an acquired knowledge in the future.
Social regulations and firms behaviour: the execution of the January 1982 decision about the 39 hour work week and the fifth week of holidays with pay, by Michel Pépin, Dominique Tonneau. This study follows a research dealing with the way companies behave when working time decreases, and begun in 1981 among a sample of 20, from various characteristics ; then the logical attitudes they foreplan- ned had been analysed. This second part of the study uses the same sample to observe the way the ordinances of January 1982 were really implemented, with a special focus on the 39 hours week and the 5 th holiday week. Reducing the legal working time brought, in a vast majority, a similar decreasing of the real working-time, which took various forms. As to the economical point of view, the ordinances seemed to have very little effect: few consequences on activity, whatever was feared, but also few employment creations. For the greatest number of these companies, what we called the logic of productivity in our previous study was adopted, and it allowed the working time reductions to come out with nearly no cost, although the salaries were as a rule totally compensated. Yet, ordinances had indirect effects that should be considered if working- time reducing should be carried on Social partners had to learn once more about the way working-time is technically detailed in the juridical dispositions: definition and reckoning of the working-time, of the vacation rights... The importance given to these problems may in a way explain the disillusion that came out here and there when working-time was reduced. But, in the same time, the discussions in many companies, were led on a more general basis, and allowed the connexions between working-time, organisation, employment and efficiency to be brought into light As a result, this mass experience might be used as an acquired knowledge in the future.
