80 years ago, the French gave the world “paid leave for all”
It cannot be said that paid leave did not exist before 1936. Napoleon III had already granted this right to “certain categories of citizens” by signing a decree in 1853 that provided two weeks of paid leave to civil servants. At the beginning of the 20th century, other select groups received the same privilege: for example, workers of the Paris Metro, gas workers, electricians, and bank clerks. But still, by 1936, only one in a hundred workers in France had the right to paid leave. A similar situation existed in several other European countries.
The holiday called “paid leave for all” became possible in 1936 thanks to the May victory in the French parliamentary elections of the left forces united in the “Popular Front.” On June 7, in Paris, at the residence of the Prime Minister (then Léon Blum), the Matignon Agreements were signed, which forever changed the lives of French workers. Among other things, they provided for the payment of unemployment benefits, a rise in wages at enterprises (an average of 12%), a reduction of the workweek from 48 to 40 hours, and, of course, the introduction of paid leave.
That same day, the law on paid leave went to parliament, and on June 20 it was adopted. The law provided for every worker who had been employed at an enterprise for at least one year 15 days of paid leave (a worker who had worked for at least six months was entitled to one week). At the time, it all seemed like an incredible victory. And the French rushed south.
That summer, 560 thousand people went on vacation – mainly to the French beaches by the sea. Now it seems minuscule, but at the time, to the small and tight-knit group of French rich people who had previously enjoyed the right to rest almost without interference, it seemed like an invasion of a horde of barbarians.
Here is an excerpt from a contemporary film by French director Jean-François Delassus dedicated to those historic days. The film, by analogy with the popular 1936 film, is called “The Popular Front: Life Belongs to Us!”. So, the workers received their first increased salary and…
“On payday, they saw that it was a little larger. And that's not all! For the first time in their lives, they had a holiday! 15 days (paid!) of holiday! They go on vacation with the look of winners… They timidly begin to occupy the beaches. They hesitate at first. Many of them have never seen the sea… The rich vacationers mock the newcomers. They call them ‘les congés payés’ (that is, ‘paid-vacationers’). The timid ‘paid-vacationers’ often leave the sandy beaches to the rich and settle on the pebble beaches: it's less comfortable there, but you are among your own…”
But despite the minor inconveniences associated with adjusting to a new reality, that summer millions of “ordinary” French people experienced an extraordinary uplift. “Doing nothing is happiness! That unforgettable summer of 1936, they finally got time to truly live. These first holidays redeemed all the dreariness of their previous life.” (“The Popular Front: Life Belongs to Us!”)
Nowadays, the French cannot get rid of the “dreariness of all life” even though many of them have a whopping 60-plus days of leave per year. According to sociological studies, the French are world leaders in the level of dissatisfaction with their own lives, surpassing in this indicator citizens of countries living in a state of war.
And now France is shaken by a wave of strikes against the new labor law. The protesters believe that the government is trying to take them back to the wild times “before the Popular Front.”
True, even now the wild government does not dare to touch the conquests of the French vacationer, who since 1982 has been entitled to no less than five weeks of paid leave per year.