It’s an announcement that made headlines in the press this weekend: in the public service, divorced parents could soon be entitled to “differentiated weeks”. That is, weeks of four days when they are responsible for their children, and of five days the rest of the time. “Gabriel Attal is particularly keen on this (…) track,” we learned in La Tribune Dimanche.
Contacted by Le Figaro, Matignon (re)clarifies the government’s project. “The subject is not just divorced parents. The goal is that the four-day week is aimed at everyone, at all employees,” we insist in Gabriel Attal’s office. So both divorced parents and others, parents or not, in the public as well as in the private sector. Week “in” four days and not “of” four days, we correct, i.e. “with the same number of hours worked” as a classic five-day week.
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And Matignon referred to the general policy speech delivered by the Prime Minister at the end of January, recalling that he had decided, at the time when he was Minister of Public Accounts, to experiment in his administration with a four-day week, “without reduction in working time”, Gabriel Attal announced that he had asked “all of (his) ministers to experiment with this solution in their central and decentralized administrations”. Despite the French’s desire for a better work-life balance, a first experiment at Urssaf in Picardie at the beginning of 2023 ended with failure, with only three employees having tried the experiment.
Over the four-day week, Gabriel Attal “wishes the State to be exemplary, and as such the Minister of the Civil Service Stanislas Guerini will be mobilized on this subject”, those around him specify. by Gabriel Attal. The Prime Minister must more broadly give him a mandate “to negotiate with the trade union organizations a framework agreement on “working better”” in the public service, indicated La Tribune Dimanche this weekend. No further details at this stage, the executive referring to the government seminar devoted to work, scheduled for March 27. “The subject of the week in four days will be on the table,” we confirm to Matignon, believing that such a development corresponds to “the aspirations of employees” and their need for “flexibility”.
