The UK multi-national oil company BP has 4000 employees in France. Their agreement on the implementation of the 35 hour week in January 2000 offered employees a choice between:

• a reduction in daily working hours to an average of 7 hours 5 minutes (35 hours 25 minutes a week) over 220 working days a year, or
• a reduction to 7 hours 48 minutes (39 hours a week) over 204 working days a year.

There is a separate agreement for senior managers which cuts their working time. The company has also increased its staff by 2%.

The statutory reduction of the working week to 35 hours in France has shown:

• shorter hours without loss of pay can be traded for flexible reorganisation of work
• a recent study of 22,500 agreements in France introducing the 35 hour week showed that 80% of employers had used the introduction of shorter hours to reorganise work to better match business fluctuations (47%), extend opening hours (26%) or move to calculating hours on an annual basis (54%)
• 60% of French HR directors surveyed considered that the introduction of the 35 hour week had enabled them to make changes to work organisation.