France: Labor law reforms finally adopted

On 21 July, the government has secured adoption of the labor law that forms the first stage in the overhaul of the country’s labor code, the goal of which is to give more leeway to collective bargaining, thus changing the balance in the relationship between the law and collective negotiation especially at company level. The new law also substantially impacts other relevant areas.
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The text the National Assembly finally adopted on 21 July forms a main artery for labor legislation ranging from working time through to the negotiation as well as termination of collective agreements, includes employers’ bodies representativeness and covers dual training, posted work, transfers of undertaking, and workers’ personal career accounts aimed at catering for discontinuous career paths and linking employment rights that are currently attached to the job instead to the worker. Below we develop some of the law’s principal measures.

A rewrite of the working time section as precursor to the new labor code. The end goal is to give company agreements greater leeway when defining working conditions (c.f. article No. 9575 on the future structure of the labor code).

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