Fifth negotiation meeting: working time

• The management and the trade unions – CFDT, CFE-CGC, CGT and FO – held the fifth negotiation meeting on Wednesday January 9.

• At the meeting, the management proposed that effective working time at all sites in France be brought into line with the legal standard of 35 hours a week.

• This would increase effective working time at the production sites by an average 6.5%. It would serve to make French plants more attractive in terms of the allocation of additional volumes from other carmakers besides Renault.

• The next meeting will be held on January 15, 2013.

Harmonizing working time at all the sites

The organization of working time at Renault’s French sites results from legislation that has evolved constantly over the last 30 years and from the introduction of agreements on the revision of working hours negotiated at head office and locally. These agreements were made during periods in which the production base was looking for extra flexibility in upward moving auto markets.

A review of current working hours at the French plants – taking account of a range of organizational procedures (standard, two shifts, two shifts plus night shift, etc.) – has revealed considerable disparities between sites in terms of effective working time, i.e. the time spent “at the workstation”, excluding breaks, time put into training accounts, and work-time reduction days. Effective working time today is lower than the standard 35-hour week in France. To this is added the possibility of accumulating, depending on the site, between 10 and 30 days, which is superior to today’s real needs.

In order to harmonize the organization of working time and introduce the right level of flexibility, the management therefore suggested re-establishing working time at an average 35 hours per week over the year, or 1,603 hours/year for all Renault sites in France.

- for industrial sites , this would mean increasing effective working time by an average 6.5%. With the working hours in place at these sites, it would be possible to continue generating ten days of RTT (work-time reduction) per year. At the same time ,this organization of working time would limit the number of days added to time savings accounts to adapt to variations in activity;
- for services sites in the Paris region , these measures would have no impact since these sites are already fairly close to the working time standard.

Contribute to boosting performance at French sites

This change in the organization of working time would be harmonized across all sites in France, making it easier to implement inter-site secondments through the regional bases. At the same time, aligning effective working time on the legal 35-hour week would bring annual savings of around €65 million.

Following the meeting, Gérard Leclercq, Executive Vice President, Chairman of Operations in France, said: “Only through a sufficiently ambitious agreement can we place our sites in a favorable position so that, looking beyond Renault product allocations, they can obtain the allocation of projects from our partners for the European markets. Against the backdrop of a European market in which the structural downturn is not expected to be greater than in 2012.”

The next negotiation meeting will take place on January 15, 2013.