“…In exchange for doing so, French employers call repeatedly for greater cost (labour) competitiveness (Beaujolin-Bellet and Schmidt, 2012), fostering a favourable environment for a new round of competitiveness agreements since the 2007-2008 crisis (Broughton et al, 2013). 4 Indeed, the best-known experimentation on competitiveness agreements in France was on working time in the 1990s and early 2000s, driven by a need to comply with the government-regulated reduced working week instigated by the Aubry and Robien laws (Gilles, 2006). Legislatively mandated working time reductions were introduced via negotiations in ways that did not harm company competitiveness (Freyssinet and Seifert, 2001).…”