Working time and labour law, Bruno Retailleau
Statutory working time: Working time negotiated by company or sector, with no reference to the 35 h
Direction of change: change of another kind, or uncertain direction, compared with current law.
The lever. Weekly working time beyond which hours become overtime. It has been 35 hours since the Aubry laws. Direction rule: ↑ longer statutory working time.
« Je propose que l’organisation du temps de travail soit laissée à la négociation collective dans chaque entreprise ou chaque branche, en arrêtant de se référer à une durée hebdomadaire de 35 heures. Passé 1 623 heures par an, je souhaite que toute heure supplémentaire travaillée ne donne plus lieu à des cotisations sociales, ni patronales ni salariales. »1Translation by the editorsI propose that the organisation of working time be left to collective bargaining in each company or each sector, ceasing to refer to a weekly working time of 35 hours. Beyond 1,623 hours a year, I want every overtime hour worked no longer to give rise to social contributions, either employer or employee.
Words of Bruno Retailleau, La Tribune Dimanche, tribune « Instaurons la priorité travail » (reprise sur republicains.fr), 2 May 2026. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme.
Encoding
No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The cited source does not cost this measure.
Published costings
none
No external costing of this position recorded to date.
Our calculation
lever that cannot be costed
Lever with no coefficient in the cost schedule: the position is compared, not costed.
Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule
Current law. Statutory working time: 35 hours per week (Labour Code, Art. L3121-27), beyond which overtime applies.
Horizon. Not applicable.
Limits. Statically, the statutory working week has no direct cost for public finances. The effects (employment, wages, cost of public hiring at 32 hours, overtime) are behavioural. For the 32-hour week in the civil service or a 6th week of paid leave, no official costing has been read. The 2024 OFCE table cites €1.6bn per year (Montaigne 2022) for the 6th week, a distinct measure. To be treated as a dynamic effect, separately.
- OFCE, Programmes législatives 2024, NFP, 2024: « sixième semaine de congés payés : 30 Md€ / 1,6 Md€ par an (IM 2022) »
How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.
- La Tribune Dimanche, tribune « Instaurons la priorité travail » (reprise sur republicains.fr), 2 May 2026. Words of Bruno Retailleau. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme. Read the source (La Tribune Dimanche, tribune « Instaurons la priorité travail » (reprise sur republicains.fr)).
Contest this encoding (prefilled email; procedure and deadlines)