The 35-hour week was never about productivity

This week has brought the death of former French President Lionel Jospin and has reignited the debate around France’s 35-hour work week. It is often framed in narrow economic terms: did it boost growth? Did it reduce unemployment? Did it improve productivity?

The answer, by most accounts, is mixed. The policy did not trigger the kind of economic collapse its critics once predicted. But nor did it produce a dramatic economic transformation. Its effects were uneven: modest employment gains, some improvements in productivity, but also rigidity in certain sectors and a proliferation of exemptions. 

On those terms alone, the 35-hour week can look like an ambiguous policy success. 

But this framing misses something more important. The intensity of the political reaction to the policy – both at the time and in the decades since – suggests that more than economic performance was at stake. The 35-hour week did not simply adjust working hours. It raised a deeper question about how time is organised within the economy, and who has the authority to shape it. 

That is why it continues to matter. 

Reducing working time challenges one of the core assumptions of modern economic life: that time should primarily be structured around production. Even relatively modest reductions force a redistribution – not just of hours, but of control. Time that would otherwise be subordinated to work becomes available for rest, care, or participation in social life. 

In that sense, the 35-hour week was not just a labour market reform. It was an intervention into the social organisation of time. 

This helps explain why its effects extended beyond standard economic indicators. One of the more overlooked consequences of shorter working hours is how they reshape patterns of consumption and movement. Longer weekends encourage short-distance travel. Particularly within national borders. In France, this translated into increased domestic tourism and spending in rural areas, as workers used extended weekends to travel beyond major cities. 

These shifts matter. They redistribute economic activity geographically, supporting smaller towns and regional economies that might otherwise struggle to attract consistent demand. Rather than concentrating consumption in urban centres or limiting it to peak holiday periods, shorter working weekends can smooth demand across time and space. 

This is not the kind of impact typically captured in headline growth figures. But it reflects a broader point: economic life is shaped not only by how much people work, but how they are able to use the time they have. 

The political controversy surrounding the 35-hour week begins to make more sense when viewed in this light. Policies that alter how time is structured do not simply affect productivity. They begin to shift the balance between labour and capital in more subtle ways. 

The Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner identified a related tension in the 1970-s. Writing in the context of Sweden’s highly developed welfare state, Meidner argued that even policies designed to promote equality – such as wage compression – could produce unintended consequences. By limiting wage inequality, they could increase profits in the most productive hands. 

The problem, in other words, was not just distribution but control. 

Meidner’s proposed solution – wage-earner fund that would gradually transfer ownership of firms to collective bodies – was far more radical than anything attempted by France. It ultimately failed politically. But it identified a central issue that continues to shape debates today: economic reforms are rarely neutral. Even modest interventions can raise questions about who exercises power within the system. 

The 35-hour week operates within this same terrain, even if it does so more indirectly. It does not redistribute ownership. But it does redistribute time – and with it, a degree of autonomy. That alone is often enough to provoke resistance. 

This is why debates about shorter working weeks so often become disproportionately heated. Critics tend to focus on economic efficiency, flexibility, and competitiveness. Supporters emphasise wellbeing, work-life balance, and quality of life. But beneath these arguments lies a more fundamental disagreement about what the economy is for. 

If the purpose of the economy is understood primarily as maximising output, then reducing working hours will always appear suspect. If, however, economic activity is seen as a means to support human wellbeing, then the case for shorter working time becomes more compelling v even where the economic effects are mixed. 

This tension is particularly relevant in the Scottish context. 

The scottish government has already taken steps in this direction. Rom October 2024, a 35-hour standard working week has been adopted for government staff without a reduction in pay, explicitly framed as a measure to improve wellbeing and work life balance. Alongside this, pilot schemes exploring even shorter working weeks – such as 32-hour models  – have begun to generate early evidence. 

The findings from these pilots are notable. Organisations participating in trials have maintained performance levels while reporting improvements in productivity, alongside significant gains in employee wellbeing. Measures of stress, burnout and fatigue have declined, while job satisfaction and overall life satisfaction have increased. In some cases, reductions in working time have been described by staff as “life changing.”

These results should be interpreted cautiously. Pilot schemes tend to involve motivated organisations and controlled conditions. They do not automatically translate across the entire economy. But they do challenge the assumption that long working hours are a necessary condition of productivity.

More importantly, they reinforce the idea that working time is not a fixed constraint by a policy choice. 

For Scotland, the implications extend beyond workplace wellbeing. As in France, shorter working weeks could have wider economic effects, particularly in relation to regional development. Increased leisure time creates opportunities for more frequent domestic travel, which in turn can support tourism and hospitality sectors – especially in rural and coastal areas. 

This matters in a country where economic activity is unevenly distributed. If shorter working patterns encourage more regular movement beyond major cities, they could contribute to a more balanced economic geography. Increased weekend travel, more consistent off-season demand, and higher local spending could provide a modest but meaningful boost to regional economies. 

None of this suggests that shorter working weeks are a simple solution to structural economic challenges. The French experience makes that clear. The policy did not fundamentally reshape economic performance, and its implementation generated complications that required ongoing adjustment. 

But it also did not produce the economic dysfunction that critics predicted. Instead, it revealed the limits of evaluating such reforms purely through conventional economic metrics. The more important question is not whether the 35-hour week ‘worked’ in a narrow sense, but what it tells us about the possibilities – and constraints – of reorganizing economic life. 

What persists in debates like this is not simply disagreement over data, but a deeper narrative about the role of work in society. One that assumes long hours are both necessary and inevitable, and that any attempt to reduce them must be justified in strictly economic terms. 

The experience of France, and increasingly of Scotland, suggests otherwise. The conversation is not about productivity. It is about time, control, and the kind of economy we are trying to build.