 Okay, so everyone will start again with our second room table. So this will be on the French example behind the myth, effect and consequences of the 35 hours we found 20 years after. And to talking about this subject, we have two speakers. So Anidu, which you are a cellular lecturer in economics at the CNAM and at the CNRS also, and at the Center for Employment and Labor Studies. Your work focuses on unemployment, employment policies and inequality between women and men. And you are also a member of the Association of Ethereodox Economists, Les Economistes Adhérez. Néli Mbila, you are a public relations official for the French company Iprema. And Iprema is a company that recycles construction materials and transforms them so they can be reused again in other projects. And Iprema has been experiencing for now four days a week. Three years. Yeah, yeah, four days a week for some years. So the idea of this room table, what we want to put it today on this question, is because French has a long historic past with work at a reduction. And sometimes it's used as an example abroad to say yes, but there have been some issues. So technically, the idea is to present what is the concrete consequences to the 35 hours reform, the good, the bad, and what are we in France now on the debate. So for that, I will give first the speech to Anne so she can make a general presentation about her presentation. And after that, I will pass the speech to Néli so she can give a concrete example of what's going on on a company that is doing the four days a week on a daily basis. So Anne, you have a floor, you have a good 15 minutes. Can you see my screen or not? No, from now on out. So I cannot share it. I don't know what happened. So can you give access? So I have a message saying begin the video. Is that it? I don't know. Yes, press that one. It's in the video. Technically, maybe you can make us as a coast. She wants to share. Sorry, the technical issues we have in the morning. But you're in now. So can you share your screen now or Anne? Try it again. I try. It depends on what screen you selected when you started. But I just see the Zoom conference. I don't have the choice, actually. Send me your presentation by email and I will run it. Sorry everyone, we'll come back to you. That's the live experience. Did you receive it? No, but maybe you can. Do you want a PDF? No, no, but PDF is good. I'm still receiving the email. So I can do a PDF. OK, I have it. There it is. OK, good. Share the screen now. OK, we'll go on. OK, OK. Is anyone answering? OK, good. Anne, you're live. So thank you very much too for inviting me. And I'm sorry for all these technical problems. So I will speak now about the French 35 hours loss. Because this is an experience and I think we can drive some lessons from this experience. So could you please, yeah. I've put some illustrations that were published in the media, but I cannot comment it because it would take too long. So please could you. So this policy always was a controversial policy. And what is very interesting from our point of view is that it has been the object of many evaluations. Working time reduction has of course a long history in France from from populaire to the 35 hours week. It's today a topical policy because from an economic point of view, we experienced slow GDP growth for years. We experienced at least in France high unemployment rates. And now with the sanitary crisis, GDP growth and unemployment are of course big concerns for all Europe. There is also social issues because there are increasing inequalities, increasing poverty rates in France and in many European countries. And the sanitary crisis aggravates these issues. And of course the topic of the day, the ecological issue that is mainly climate change and also biodiversity losses. And working time reductions is also an issue in in political terms in French electoral context is quite back in the debate. So there has been many evaluations of the 35 hours a week and many controversies. The last one in France was quite an academic controversy. The book from Pierre Cauc and André Zilberberg named le négationisme économique et commence en débarasser which means economic negationism and how to get rid of it. Negationism means Holocaust denial. It's the term. So for Cauc and Zilberberg, people who are in favor with the 35 hours week are negationists because according to them 35 hours lows were very destructive for the economy. So this is interesting to see how much the debate is like passionate. We can change the slide. So now there is a need for revisiting the 35 hours policy 20 years after. We can explore its outcomes in terms of employment creation and evolution of working time impact on employers working conditions and living conditions and impact for employers and firms. So we can also see what was said in terms of evaluations and evaluation methodologies. There has been only one negative assessment of the obry lows. And this negative assessment was often quoted to criticize the lows. So we can continue, please. So there is in France a long history of working time reduction. The first issues were of course in past centuries to improve working and living conditions for for instance for children at work for mothers, et cetera. And since the 1980s with the rise of an employment, most issues relate to employment creation to work sharing and to working time flexibility. So we can distinguish because it's not at all the same things. Individual working time reductions mostly under the form of part time working and collective working time reductions which refer to the norms of working time to changing norms. And also life cycle working time reduction, which means mostly early retirement, parental leave, et cetera. So in France we moved during the 1980s and 1990s from individual working time reductions to collective working time reduction. During the 1980s the priority was to develop part time employment and flexible working time agreements which were individual flexibility. And in the mid 1990s with the Robian laws and the Aubrey laws, 35 hours laws, France turned to collective working time reductions. So what was the logic of these laws, notably the Aubrey laws 1998 and 2000 century, there were new legal working week, 35 hours and firms implementing this new legal working week benefited from contribution exemptions that had to either create or maintain employment. So there was the need to effectively reduce working time and create or maintain employment. Can go to the next slide. But this policy was implemented for a very short period of time because actually since 2003 there has been a tendency to unravel the 35 hours week beginning with the Fillon law in 2003 and then a series of laws and it continues still with the sanitary crisis because an increase of overtime hours has been decided in strategic sectors in later, I don't remember March or April. So now in France the legal working week is still 35 hours but firms benefit with important flexibilities that allow them to use working weeks, longer working weeks without much cost. So we can continue. There has been a consensus building about Aubrey laws that allow us to really know what happened with these laws, what was the impact of the 35 hours law. First it has to be said that discussions about working time reductions began much before Aubrey laws began in the 1980s in France. What would be the conditions for a reduction of working time to create, to really create employment. So the conditions were for sharing employment but also sharing added value. Maybe we had to decide whether to make profit lower or to make wages lower. So will people work 35 hours a week paid 39 hours like it was before or will they have to accept to reduce their wages. And also there were questions about the rise of labor costs for firms. So all these questions were debated before the Aubrey law. There were also quantifications regarding different scenarios and the predictions were that the reduction of working time could create about 100,000 jobs or even 1 million if all firms implement the reduction of working time without increasing their productivity rate. So there was a big scale of possibilities and now we can continue to see whether the 35 hours law created jobs. So I had made a table quoting major evaluations. So there was notably a special issue of the in say which is the major economic and statistic institute in France. And the special issue of the in say review named economy and statistic contains several articles that arrived at a kind of consensus about the fact that the Aubrey law should have created at least 3 and a half 100,000 jobs. And even there was another evaluation by Michel Husson, a macroeconomic simulation considering that about 500,000 jobs had been created. Also the evaluations considered that the budgetary cost for the state was reasonable. And most of the debates at that time was about the reasons why these jobs had been created. Was it due to work sharing or to social contribution exemptions? Now we know that social contribution exemptions in France do not create so many jobs. So we can say that most of the job creation was due to work sharing. And there has been also studies about the impact on working conditions for employees, the impact of productivity for employers, et cetera. So we can continue. So this is about the consensus. The consensus just to say that this consensus has always been contested in France in spite of the converting evaluation. And there was notably maybe we can just go back to the table. I'm sorry. Yeah. In the last part of the table, it's the evaluation by Schemar and Vassmer. And this is the only one that say that the evaluation was not really able to conclude that the Obrillo had created a job because the conclusion of Schemar and Vassmer was that it was not really clear. The law could have created one million jobs but could also have restricted one million jobs. So it was not really a decisive conclusion. Sorry, we can continue again. Yeah. So just to conclude about the assessments of regarding the Obrillo, we can say that it was not a miracle because an employment was still high at that time. But it was not a bad global assessment, especially in terms of employment creation. There are also rather positive opinions of both employers and employees about the 35 hours load. Some negative outcomes for employees as regards working conditions. And also France was not different from its European neighbours in 2003. I mean, before France unraveled the 35 hours load. The average weekly working time for full timers was 40 hours a week. It was just a little below the European Union average. But the working time for part timers in France was above the average. So when we look at working time durations in some European countries, we can see that France is, I mean, very close to the average in Europe. Now the data from 2016. Just we have to say that international comparison is not easy, but it looks that France does not distinguish. It's not very different from its neighbours. So we can continue. Okay. Just about the debate regarding the 35 hours load. It was an academic debate. It's also a debate about experimentation methodology because Pierre Cailloux and André Zilberberg in their book referred as regards working time to the evaluation of Schema and Vassmer. And what was this evaluation about? It was comparing the Alsace-Moselle region of France with the rest of France relying on the labour force survey and using quasi-experimental methodology. The comparison relied on the fact that Alsace-Moselle had two days off more than the rest of France. So the working time reduction was 35 hours, 21 minutes instead of 35 hours. And the conclusion found no significant difference between Alsace-Moselle and the rest of France. So it was consistent with the fact that the 35 hours load would have had no effect at all on employment. However, what can be said about this experiment, this evaluation, is that first it's very far from experimental standards in economics or in medicine because there are two test zones and no control zones because every region has applied the 35 hours load. So the conclusion is inconclusive, as I already said. And we can say that as usual, experimentation is subjected to manipulation. Yes, we can continue. So there has been a controversy about this evaluation. I have said that it's not really coherent with evaluation standards, but also statisticians tried to reproduce the experiment, the computation, and he found code errors that make the conclusion false. So many problems regarding this evaluation. So I think we can rely on the consensus that concluded 35 hours load created at least three and a half hundred thousand jobs in France. We can continue. So to conclude, just we can go back to it. Do I have some time? You have one minute to conclude. So this illustration shows that the figure is François Fillon work tirelessly right away with working time reduction. So now we are back to the past world with many incentives to work more in the French labour code in the French regulations. We can continue. However, there is a need for more debate and controversy and maybe that current controversy about working time signals that this is a topical question for the democratic debate about job creation, job quality, regulation of working time over the life cycle, and of course ecological issues. And after the debate in France, we asked our association, the Economiste à Terre, Appale d'Economistes, we asked the French Ministry of Employment for our consensus conference about the impacts of the 35 hours load. We asked that in 2016. We had an answer in 2017 saying there is a lack of time before the presidential election. And now, of course, this is not a question at the agenda at all in France. We can continue. So just to make the point, what can we learn from the 35 hours week from the French experience? There has been social issues that make the question now how to implement full employment and fair sharing of work, taking account of the diversity of work organization, of working and living conditions. We didn't see that slide. I don't know if it was in it. But for employees in France, many of them suffered a lot from the 35 hours load, notably low qualified employees for whom work pressure was reinforced. And in particular, time schedules were extended with low, I don't know, delayed prevalence. I don't remember anyway. It was an increase of time pressure for many low qualified employees. So there is a need to take account of the diversity of work organization, of working and living conditions in order to make working time reduction of progress for every worker. So the question is maybe what regulations of working time are needed to avoid making things work for vulnerable workers? My question to you is, is four days a week a one-feet all rude? Or is it some kind of slogan to make advances in working time reduction? And how to guarantee that low wage will rise? Another thing is about ecological issues, how to ensure that working time reduction will support an ecological transition, because it was not considered an issue in the French 35 hours policy. And there are also, of course, major economic and democratic issues. I think this is the point, the major point, to what extent are neoliberalism and capitalism suitable for organizing working time reduction in an ecological term? How much have industrial relations and firm governments to be changed for that purpose? Because if we continue to implement working time reduction policies and taking care of firm's profit, if this remains a major issue, it will be very hard to reconcile working time reduction and ecological transition. Thank you very much. Thank you, Anne. Thank you for your general overview of this question, and I'd like to say very controversial in France and at this present time also. I will now give the floor to Néli Mbilla to talk about an experimentation, an implementation of working time reduction in a company. Hello, everyone. Let me first introduce Ypremar. Ypremar has been founded in 1989, and is an independent company expert in recycling, building, and public source construction materials. We have 16 operating sites in six regions of France, and each year 2.5 million tons of material are transported to the company recycling centers for use. Ypremar is an expert in industrial ecology and offers on its platform a paid service for receiving pre-sorted deconstruction, so it's land concrete or pavement layers. As the company also produces eco-material used for the construction of road infrastructure, and we have 100 operas. So Ypremar was among the pioneers to apply the four days a week 23 years ago. The idea emerged from many readings of Kea La Routre writings in 1995. He explains that from an economic point of view, we have to move toward work sharing, allowing to cut down employees' working time while increasing their productivity. The idea is interesting as it makes two objectives pursued by Ypremar, economic development, and fight against employees' difficult working conditions. The idea was taken up in the Derbyin Law of 11 June 1996, which allowed companies to reduce employees' working hours either to hire more or to avoid a redundancy plan in exchange for reduced social charges for employees during seven years. Ypremar shows an offensive agreement allowing it to increase its production and create employment. So how does it work? First of all, the compensatory day is fixed and validated by the senior management. The compensatory day imposes on working in pairs or in group of three. One absent at the time is alone among the group of two or three for the training or day off. The compensatory day guarantees the development of individual skills, allowing skills acquisition on two positions. And the compensatory day can be deleted if required by the company. So that is the modality for Ypremar. If you want to know the different advantages, you have advantages for the employees and you have advantages for the company. For the company after 24 years of the system, there is a decrease in working hours for by 10%. The salaries, excuse me, are still the same. It's important to say that the salary is still the same. And you have so an extra day off per week. And has the employee working in a team, we have to develop the skills because when an employee is not at work, his colleague has to maintain the work if I'm here. And for the company, there are different advantages. There is an increase in production capacities by 12%. If I can resume, we work 30 months in one year with the system. And for the production with the system, there is an implementation of preventive maintenance. If I can say before the system, the maintenance was only curative. And with the system, we can organize a day of preventive maintenance. It's a weekly organization. And with the system, there is an increase in working hours for commercial reception desk because in our centers, the recension hour has been increased by 40%. So for our clients, it's very simple for them to go to our centers. And on a societal level, this is for us, it's an approach who are, how can I say, it's an approach who goes with the story because as Mrs. Heidou said before, after centuries, we are more clean, less and less. So that is our experiment. And it was very positive. I'm positive that if we can ask now our employees, if they want to go back to the whole system, I'm positive that no one will ask for the whole system because with the four days week system, you can have a balance between your working time and your personal time. And we know that when you work and you have much more time to be with your family, to do sports, it's better when you are going back to your work. So that's our experience in Ypresma. Can you just tell us how many jobs you created over the years? Yes. So when the system has been implemented, we have 42 employees and 10 years after, there are 90 employees more. We passed from 42 employees to 90. Okay. Okay, thank you. And Elie, for that presentation, I'm sure if people want to know more, they will ask you the question. Yes. Okay. Okay, so can you get my camera please? Okay, thank you. Okay, so I will open a discussion now based on the presentation of Elie and of Anne. So we have already some questions. So maybe Anne, for the first one, can you comment a bit more on what we can learn from the French example when it comes to the driver of work at a reduction. It is state regulation of the company, state regulation of the right level on the company level. Yes, I would say, I would say that in France where labor unions are very weak, state regulation is very important. I mean, to fix a legal duration of working time, maybe that would be the case in some other, in many other countries, but in France, I did not take time to say that. Many was left also to negotiations within France because the work organization is basically decided within France. So the 35 hours laws fixed a limit for the legal duration of work. After 35 hours, it's overtime hours. Of course, you have the right to work overtime. But the negotiations within France were about how we organize the 35 hours work for every categories of employees. For instance, for managers, there was often more freedom to choose days off while it was less the case for low qualified workers. So the drivers are, I mean, there are multiple drivers and maybe we have to consider the state of industry relations in every country. So I have no definite answer. Yeah, thank you. There were other questions. Yeah, yeah, I will get back to you with the question. The next question is, are there any new developments on working time reduction in reaction to the corona crisis? And I will complete it a bit to give more context. Just before the corona crisis, we have a national citizen convention for climate was organized. And the convention proposed in one of its 150 measures to have working time reduction again. And it starts a whole new debate. So I think it's in that context. And we are seeing more and more companies who want to experiment again. So what do you think of a new development and of a current state of the debate in France? I will be maybe severe with the current government because the climate convention we can see in the budget bill for next year that there is no room for the conclusions of this climate convention. And I think that the French government has no intention at all to progress towards working time reduction. On the contrary, among the first reactions to the crisis in the health sector and in other strategic sectors for the economy, the decision was to increase the working time thresholds to allow firms to increase working time in these sectors. And of course, there has been a working time reduction due to the confinement and due to the sanitary crisis, but the working time reduction is of course not a legal one because what happens in legal point of view is an increase of working time possibilities. The reduction of working time goes through especially short time working schemes, which means also a reduction of wages, even if it's a small reduction, even if it's contributed to maintain employment. So there is no advances in the direction of working time reductions now. It could be, but it's not the case. It's not the choice of the government. Thank you. Nilly, do you want to comment on the question or not on the new developments of working time? Do you have, I don't know, I see some companies who want to experiment. Do they come to see you on what you're doing or not? Have you visitors that come to know? Yes, I frequently contacted by some companies who are interested in our system. And I have noticed that there is a lot of, how can I say, in English, there are some ideas that if the employees have a day of, an extra day of the productivity of the company will go down. And in IEPREMA, we have noticed but it's completely the opposite. The employees are used to work seven hours and 45 hours a week. It's 45 minutes more by day than a normal employee. For some person it's a lot, but in IEPREMA, it's an habit. You just have to be used to work like this way. And I think that's why we speak a lot in this type of conference because it's always the same thing. It's like after the sanitary crisis, a lot of people were sitting that if you work at home, you don't work. And despite the sanitary crisis, a lot of companies are still working. So it's the same thing with four days a week. We have to change the mindset of a lot of the CEO and our president, I have spoken a lot with a lot of his colleagues, CEO colleagues, and it's always the same thing. They think that if the employees have a more day off, they will not be efficient. And it's completely the opposite. But I think our system has to be adapted because to be adapted, our system cannot be duplicate in every company. Yes, every company has to create their own system. Two questions about IEPREMA more. Do you know what your employees are doing during the day off? It's for rest, it's for engage in social causes. You talk about training information, but are they doing other things on their day off? The day off allows them to do other things, what are they? Yes, most of them are spending time with their families. Others are making sport and they are doing their papers because when you are working from Monday to Friday, if you have to go to the city court to make your administration, it's less easier than if you have a full day off to do all these kinds of things. But most of the time it's for spending time with family, for the kids, that's the most thing that they are doing. Is the normal workforce involved in the system coming up with new ways to increase productivity or the system is all led by the management technically? Are there workers that say, this is a good idea, we can implement it to be more productive, more efficient? Do you have that type of relation inside IEPREMA? First of all, when the management proposed the system in IEPREMA, there was a vote because the CEO wanted to be sure that everyone was okay with the system because the system is funding with a team spirit. As I say, during my speech, you have to work with two or three of your colleagues. So if you want the system to work, everyone has to be okay with it. So could you repeat your question because I was in my explanation and I forgot the question. Is the normal workforce involved in coming up with new ways to increase productivity or it is all worked out by the management technically? Are the workers allowed to propose new ideas to increase productivity or this is completely managed by the... Okay. The system is working because the day off is always the same. Always. If you want the company to still going, it has to be fixed. So it's always the same day. But if the activity has to be more effective of if someone is absent, you have to adapt the team. So it depends on the context. Most of the time, you have the schedule. The schedule is still the same. But is there a problem? Or if you have a personal problem, then you have to be at home because you have a problem with your kid. There will be no four days a week. We have some employees in Iprema who are not in the four days because for a personal convenience, it's not an obligation. It's our system, but it's not an obligation. Okay. Thank you. Another question from Remy. Compared with 20 years ago, the labor market, it's even more split up in two. We've shortage of highly-califold labor in some sector and plenty of uncalifold labor unable to increase competencies. In that respect, what would be the effect of a uniform reduction of working time? So that's a link to the question. Anne, I've spoken at the end of this presentation. What do you think about that? Do we have to have a uniform reform on working time? It's all the same. This is not what you were talking before. So I ask you the question of Remy. That was not exactly what I had in mind, but I had in mind mostly working conditions and living conditions of employees. But of course, the question about the polarization of work is an issue. Maybe we can say that if there are labor shortages in some highly-qualified segment of the labor force, there are also many young people who have a diploma and have to accept jobs below their possibilities, mostly because of employers' behavior. Many employers want to have what we call a mouton à cinq pattes. It's impossible to translate, but many employers, when people who have, in France, they are particularly selective, much more than many other European countries are some survey show. And French employers want to have people who are both young, have diplomas, many years of experience, which may be contradictory with being young. And so they don't find the mouton... The five legships to translate. The five legships. They don't find it. So to answer more seriously, I think that when there are labor shortages, maybe there is a problem with employers' behavior. And sometimes a solution could be found with internal training. I mean, in some cases, even in every case, training the employers and maintaining, ensuring that employability is in France an obligation of the employer, even if the French government recently tried to remove this obligation. So this part of the question could be solved that way. And of course, a reduction of working time could help people with low qualification to find a job. And also there is a problem with unqualified labor, which is the recognition of qualifications, because many low qualified workers are of course qualified to work. Another question to Néli. Do you have an impression that as you have a system for the fourth day of the week, people apply on Imprema to experience that? So they say, this is another good reason why I want to work for Imprema. Do you have some experiences or not? I spoke with human resources service about it and most of our candidates don't know that we have this kind of system. But when they discuss about this system, of course they are surprised. And this is when the candidates hesitate between two companies, our system is of course a good argument. So for the recruitment, it's a good thing, a very good thing. Okay. If you have more questions, don't hesitate to post them in the module. I have two rebounds on the two last questions. With the coronavirus crisis, we will have a huge unemployment rate that we go up in France. We have some numbers that will be announcing of a 10% rate. Maybe we don't know. It's scary. And what's said a bit about what we know with the reports, the many evaluation, is that working time reduction is the cheapest way to work. It costs less money that every other measures that the government has taken since then to incite companies to create jobs. My question is, do you think that as we advance the crisis, the pressure of unemployment that is very strong in France will help start a new debate or not? Because we have no habit in France of a huge unemployment rate. But if it's higher than the whole recipe of giving money to companies, I say, yes, we will give you money, but we don't ask you to mandatory employ people with that money. Do you think it would help to start the debate or not on that question? I'm not very optimistic. I think that there has been a very efficient construction of the public opinion by neo-ribirals so that many people believe that the value of work would be lost if we reduce the working time further. Many people also believe that if the cost of work increases, many employment will be lost and if the cost of labor decreases, it will favor employment creation unless evaluations show that social contribution exemptions cost a lot and comparing to its cost it creates very few jobs because employers are looking at perspectives of consumptions as regards their projects. They need work only if what they produce is demanded on the market. So it's the question. Also, I would say that I don't believe working time reduction represents a sufficient solution in the current sanitary crisis. It's part of the solution but maybe it should be a small part of the solution because I think that to maintain employment there is a need of public investment and public employment creation, direct employment creation. One of the problems with the 35 hours weeks in France was at the hospital because first it was implemented late and second, last but not least, there was no employment creations. So it was very hard for the hospital to face the reduction of working time and mostly to face austerity policies. So now with the sanitary crisis we have a hospital without resources especially without human resources. So there is a need not for working time expansion in strategic sectors because people will be so exhausted that they will abandon their job. This is the case for some people in the health sector already. So there is a need of direct employment creation and this would contribute to support the whole system because austerity has been catastrophic in the health sector also in the education sector because we see that we have full classrooms and especially in the university which are overcrowded in France and presumably in several other European countries in France where we have a dynamic demographic we had no investment in the education sector. So there is a need of direct work employment creation in public services to get the working time reduction. It's interesting that you said working time is a part of the solution that we have job guarantee from the state with the ecological transition it's a part of the major most systemic proposition we have to make. Margarita wanted to ask some questions can you give her the speech briefly so she can ask a question or an intervention please. Margarita? Yes. Do you hear me? Okay. I had a question and it's now really directly connected with that what Anne said just now. I think in France you had in some sense the same problem as we had in Germany with the 35 hours in the metal industry all these regulations have been without any obligatory regulation of compensation of stuff it was possible but not obligatory and because of that we have the experience both in France and in Germany only let's say the half of the possible workplace employment effect of the working time reduction has been realized the other half has gone into the intensification of work and in you described for the hospitals it's not that specific but I think we have this phenomenon in general only not in branches where you have completely defined relations of workforce and labor concrete workplace but if we go ahead with further working time reduction we must really think about this point and really demand working time reduction with defined compensation of stuff and another thing I would mention and I think this would be important for the further mobilization for further working time reduction and you described and how all the public opinion and the conservative presidents and so on were going against the 35 hours but interesting is that one of them even when they wanted to do it dared really to destroy the 35 hours and why? I think this would be also a very important point of an evaluation as I know many many of them who really have 35 hours these are more of the higher qualified and so on but they really got almost they take it in form of short extra holiday and this is an element of life quality for many many people and the idea to delete the 35 hours with the consequence that they wouldn't have any more extra holiday this is impossible I think in front and I think this feeling and this experience that shorter working time really is a factor and the higher life quality should be taken by all organizations or trade unions or social movements or scientists who want to promote working time reduction today as a basic motivation for more further working time Thank you Magrata Do you want to comment? First there has been defined compensation of staff in the Obrillo firms had to create jobs or if there were difficulties to guarantee that they will maintain employment and some firms had been sanctioned because they did not comply with the rules I mean as soon as firms accepted to benefit from contribution exemptions they had to comply with employment creation and actually between 1997 and 2002 there had been 2 million jobs created among which some were related to the 35 hours load so I think we cannot say that there were no defined compensation of staff the problem was in the public sector in the public services not only in the hospital because it was already austerity in these sectors for instance in education there was no implementation of the 35 hours at least for lecturer at the university we did not see the 35 hours load despite the fact that a few years before an official report stated that we already worked more than 39 hours a week so most of the problem was in the public sector and related to austerity and also why 35 hours were not destroyed of course because they were very popular but in a way they were destroyed anyway because now firms may extend the duration of work during the week above 35 hours without cost or to a very low cost and of course employers cannot refuse also when you say that French people benefit from extra holidays due to 35 hours a week this is not the case of everybody because for managers of course often they can take extra days but for many people 35 hours do not take the form of extra days especially for so-called low-qualified unskilled workers thank you I think it's time to conclude so I will let you have some time both of you to comment and maybe conclude a battle on table what you say something maybe what for you or discussion meant and that's it and I think we will end the long table with your two final interventions we have this experience since 20 years now and we know that when you have a full personal life you are more efficient in your work that's why I've said that it's like we are working 13 months a year so for us it's a very positive experience and we are thinking we are working 35 hours a week and we are thinking about working 32 hours a week because the system works the system is efficient we won on production so why don't we continue in this way I'm sure we will say but for us of course it's not the solution but I think for a lot of companies the system can be organized but the employees have to be informed because they can be afraid of this kind of system because when the system has been introduced to the employees a lot of them think that their salary will be cut or something it wasn't the case and now they know it and I think in France and in a lot of countries the mindset has to be changed you can be a good employee and you can have a full personal life we think you need to know thank you difficult to conclude after that yes there are good practices as we say that show it is possible and it's very interesting to look how it works maybe we can say that it's democratic functioning it agrees and when I don't know maybe if employees are consulted on their time schedule their availability, what they want etc we can organize something which works what can be learned at the macroeconomical level is that it's not always like that that it works I also know that first firms to implement the working time reduction within the context of the Robien Law for instance just before the Aubrey Laws where firms where it was like easy to implement it because it was corresponding to both the expectations of the employer who were willing to reorganize work or time schedule etc and it was also a social climate that was peaceful and democratic but of course this is not the case for all firms and we also have to look at what doesn't work in terms of the time reduction of the 35 hours low in the implementation of working time reduction and to be very cautious about unskilled workers and their expectations too about wages, about time schedule time pressure, intensification of work yes this was part of the question in France there has been an intensification of work productivity was very high already before the Aubrey Law and it became even higher so there is in France a program of work intensity which is probably too high which causes disease and yes, troubles and this is also an issue, the quality of work and condition, quality of work and of course the important issue is also the role of the state and employment in the public sector there is a reservoir of potentiality for job creation that could answer social and environmental needs that's all thank you both for coming, for your participation it was really great to have a full description of what was going on in France and from now so thank you we will end this front table now we will have a lunch break now and we will have our last front table on the great subject now we see all the dimension of working time reduction in length with climate reduction the experimentation in every country how to build coalition to promote working time reduction between the different actors and activists unions, NGOs and climate movements so this will be the film for last front table so we will cut off the webinar for one hour and we will reopen the webinar at 2pm so thank you for coming this morning we will see you this afternoon I wish you bon appetit so that's it