In France, the 35-hour workweek set by Article L3121-27 of the Labor Code is the legal threshold for a full-time schedule, not a ceiling on how much you can work.1Légifrance. Code du travail – Article L3121-27 Once you cross 35 hours in a calendar week, overtime pay, extra rest, and other protections are triggered. Employees regularly work more than that, and the law allows it, within strict daily and weekly caps.
What the 35 Hours Actually Measure
Article L3121-1 defines effective working time as any period when you are at your employer’s disposal, following their instructions, and unable to attend to personal matters.2Légifrance. Code du travail – Article L3121-1 Commuting does not count unless your employer requires you to work during the trip. Lunch and rest breaks are excluded too, with one exception: if you must stay at your workstation and respond to requests during a meal break, that time gets counted as work.
This matters because every calculation flows from it. Overtime, hour caps, and rest entitlements all depend on effective working time, not simply being on company premises.
On-Call Hours Are Treated Differently
Under Article L3121-9, an on-call period (astreinte) is time when you are away from your workplace and outside your employer’s direct control, but must remain reachable and ready to intervene.3Légifrance. Code du travail – Sous-section 2 Astreintes The on-call period itself is not effective working time. Only the actual intervention counts. A Sunday spent on call without being called in earns you compensation for the constraint, but those hours do not add to your weekly total for overtime purposes.
Compensation for on-call time takes the form of either pay or rest, as set by a company or branch agreement. If no agreement exists, the employer sets the terms after consulting the Social and Economic Committee. You must receive at least 15 days’ notice of your on-call schedule, cut to one full day only in exceptional circumstances.
Daily and Weekly Ceilings You Cannot Cross
The daily maximum is 10 hours of effective work.4Légifrance. Code du travail – Article L3121-18 Emergencies, labor inspectorate authorizations, and certain collective agreements can push it higher, but not past 12 hours.5Service-Public.fr. Durée du travail d’un salarié du secteur privé à temps plein âgé d’au moins 18 ans
Weekly limits are firm. You cannot work more than 48 hours in any single week, and your average over any rolling 12-week period cannot exceed 44 hours.6Légifrance. Code du travail – Article L3121-20 Employers who violate these caps face a fine of 750 euros per affected worker.5Service-Public.fr. Durée du travail d’un salarié du secteur privé à temps plein âgé d’au moins 18 ans
You are also entitled to at least 11 consecutive hours of rest between two working days.7Service Public. Employee’s Daily Rest Weekly rest adds a separate 24-hour block, which in practice follows the 11-hour daily rest, producing a minimum of 35 consecutive hours off each week.8Service-Public.fr. Employee’s Weekly Rest Collective agreements cannot cut these rest periods.
Overtime Pay Above 35 Hours
Any hour worked beyond 35 in a calendar week is overtime. By default, the premium is 25% for the first eight overtime hours (hours 36 through 43) and 50% for every hour after that.9Service-Public.fr. Overtime Work of a Private Sector Employee A collective agreement can change the rates, but no agreement can push the premium below 10%.10Urssaf. Overtime Pay
Overtime is also capped annually. Without a collective agreement providing otherwise, you cannot work more than 220 overtime hours per year. A company or branch agreement can raise or lower that figure. Employers must keep records of all overtime hours, and you have the right to inspect those records to verify your pay.
RTT: Rest Days Instead of Overtime Pay
Many French employers set the actual workweek at 39 hours and compensate the four hours above 35 not with overtime pay but with additional days off. This is the Réduction du temps de travail, or RTT. A 39-hour schedule earns roughly half a day of RTT per week, or about two days per month.11Service Public. Réduction du temps de travail (RTT)
Who picks the dates depends on the company agreement. A common split lets the employer choose half of the days and the employee the other half. Unused RTT days generally expire at the end of the calendar year or the reference period set by the company agreement. If you do not take them, you lose them.
One way to hold onto them is a Compte Épargne-Temps (CET), or Time Savings Account, when your company offers one. A CET lets you bank unused RTT days, your fifth week of annual leave, and certain other rest entitlements, then draw them later as paid time off or, in some cases, cash.12Service-Public.fr. Compte épargne-temps (CET) du salarié Employers are not required to offer a CET, and employees with access to one are never required to use it.
Part-Time Contracts Follow a Separate Track
Part-time employees are generally contracted for at least 24 hours per week.13Service-Public.fr. Part-time Employee: What Is the Minimum Weekly Working Time? Exceptions cover very short fixed-term contracts of seven days or less, employees replacing an absent colleague, and workers under certain integration programs. You can also ask in writing for fewer hours for personal reasons such as health, family obligations, or a second job.
When a part-time employee works beyond contracted hours but stays under 35, those extra hours are called heures complémentaires, not overtime. By default, you can be asked to work up to 10% beyond your contracted hours; a collective agreement can raise that ceiling to one-third.14Service-Public.fr. Temps partiel d’un salarié dans le secteur privé You can refuse additional hours if your employer gives less than three days’ notice or if the request would push you beyond the contractual or legal limit.
Forfait Jours: Days Counted Instead of Hours
Not every job fits an hourly framework. Article L3121-58 creates an alternative for managers and other autonomous professionals whose schedules cannot be predetermined. Under a forfait jours (day-based) agreement, workload is measured in days per year rather than hours per week, with a legal maximum of 218 working days per year.15Service-Public.fr. Working Hours of the Employee: Flat Rate Agreement in Hours or Days A collective agreement can set a lower number, not a higher one.
Two categories of workers qualify: managers with genuine autonomy over their schedule, and employees whose working time cannot be predetermined and who have real independence in carrying out their responsibilities. The arrangement requires a written individual agreement between employee and employer.16Légifrance. Code du travail – Article L3121-58
Workers on a forfait jours are exempt from the 35-hour weekly threshold and the 10-hour daily maximum. They still keep the 11-hour daily rest and the 35-consecutive-hour weekly rest. If an employee waives some rest days and works beyond 218 days, those extra days must be compensated at a rate at least 10% above normal pay.
The employer must track working days, keep workload reasonable, and hold at least one annual meeting with the employee on schedule, workload, and rest.17Eurofound. Fixed Working Days System for Managers to Be Reviewed Skipping these steps allows a court to invalidate the entire agreement. The employee is then reclassified under standard hourly rules, and the employer owes back pay for every overtime hour that was never tracked or compensated.
Sectors With Equivalence Hours
Certain industries involve long stretches of waiting mixed with short bursts of active work. Overnight hospital shifts and long-haul trucking are classic examples. French law addresses this through heures d’équivalence, which treats a longer period of presence as equivalent to 35 hours of standard work because much of the time is inactive.18Service-Public.fr. Equivalency Hours in the Private Sector
Sectors using equivalence hours include private hospitals and commercial healthcare facilities, road freight transport, social tourism, certain retail food stores, private security, fire and rescue services, and casinos. The specific ratios are set by branch-level collective agreements or regulatory decrees for each sector. Overtime for these workers kicks in only once they exceed the higher threshold set by their equivalence scheme, not at 35 hours.
The Right to Disconnect
Since 2017, French law has required employers to negotiate rules protecting the ability to stop answering work emails and messages outside working hours. Article L2242-17 makes this part of the mandatory annual negotiations on quality of work life for companies with more than 50 employees.19Eurofound. Right to Disconnect: Implementation and Impact at Company Level The law does not prescribe a specific method, leaving arrangements to the industry and workplace.
If negotiations fail, the employer must draft a charter after consulting the Social and Economic Committee, spelling out how employees exercise the right and providing training for staff and managers on reasonable use of digital tools. The Labor Code sets no specific penalty for violations, which is the main criticism of the provision. An employee who can show that constant after-hours contact harmed their health may still have grounds for a claim.
What Collective Agreements Can and Cannot Change
Almost every rule above can be modified by collective agreement, within limits. Since the 2017 labor reforms, company-level agreements generally take priority over industry-wide agreements on working time. Your employer’s negotiated deal with employee representatives can set overtime rates, annual overtime quotas, RTT schedules, and forfait jours conditions that differ from the industry default, provided they stay above the legal floor such as the 10% minimum overtime premium.
Some protections cannot be bargained away at any level. The 48-hour absolute weekly cap, the minimum rest periods, and the health and safety obligations in the Labor Code remain mandatory regardless of what any agreement says. In companies with more than 50 employees, the Social and Economic Committee must be consulted before the employer changes work schedules, introduces new work organization methods, or modifies internal policies that affect working conditions, giving employee representatives a check on how agreements are applied day to day.