• Laws and secondary legislation gathered together in what is called the Code du Travail, the labour code.
• Collective agreements and other accords signed by the representative organisations of employers and employees, at the level of the sector as a whole (for wage scales in particular) and of the individual company. A company agreement may not provide terms more disadvantageous than those provided by law or by the agreement covering the sector in question, except in respect of working hours.
• The internal regulations of the company, drawn up by the employer (as governing health and safety, or discipline).
• Local custom and practice (as regards certain days off, for example).

There are several forms of employment contracts:

• The normal form is the contrat à durée indéterminé (CDI), an open-ended contract that can be terminated at any time by either party, subject to certain conditions varying with seniority, the nature and scale of the lay-off, the sector (notice, compensation, assistance with job-seeking etc.).
• There are also various forms of fixed-term contract (contrat à durée déterminé – CDD) covering temporary or part-time work and work-experience schemes for the young or the unemployed.

In the latter case, the contract must in writing (and include various obligatory details), while for the open-ended contract the law requires only a written document to be produced on recruitment, with the name of the employer and the date and time of the recruitment.

In all cases, a pay-slip (with various obligatory details) must be provided.

Pay: Income from employment generally consists of a basic salary, often supplemented by bonuses, profit-sharing and benefits in kind.

The salary fixed by the employer must conform to certain legal provisions and to the terms of relevant collective agreements: an hourly minimum wage (SMIC) is laid down by the government and the minimum rate for the job is laid down in the collective agreements (often ignored).

The basic salary is paid monthly, the other elements not. For most professional and managerial staff, their pay includes an element that varies with performance and the individual case.

Overtime is paid when the legal working week is exceeded, except when working time is calculated in terms of a global annual figure (see below).

There are various kinds of bonuses, the most common for professional and managerial staff being the payment of an additional month’s salary (the 13th month) at the end of the year, performance-related pay, and payments related to family events.

Increases for length of service are becoming more and more rare. Bonuses are obligatory where they are provided for in the collective agreement or in the contract of employment.

Two other elements come into play in businesses employing more than 50 people:

• Compulsory profit-sharing. This payment is sometimes supplemented by the optional performance-related scheme available to businesses of all sizes.
• Bonuses and services provided by the Works Council as part of the social benefits provided by the business to its employees.

Finally, certain professional and managerial staff (top-flight specialists, employees of high-tech firms) may be offered stock options, and in very large companies, all employees may be offered the opportunity to buy shares at advantageous prices.

For salary levels, the APEC gives some data according to occupation – around 60 occupational groups are listed. This information is given alongside jobs offered, in the press or in the APEC services, or at the point of professional and managerial staff enrolment in the APEC scheme. This data by occupational group is given as a median salary and a scale showing the upper and lower deciles.

They are also differentiated into two regions of employment – Ile de France (around Paris), or elsewhere in France. They are also divided into the four large employment sectors. They are not found directly on the APEC website, but you can ask for them.

Other statistics are given by magazines, derived from different studies, but they are not very reliable. They are often concerned only with the salaries of professional and managerial staff in large enterprises.

Working hours are determined by the employer, on condition that they do not infringe the many relevant provisions of the law or of collective agreements.

The legal working week (35 hours for businesses of more than 20 employees, still 39 for smaller businesses until 1st January 2002) serves only as a standard of reference for the calculation of paid overtime.

The average working week for employees in the private sector is 40 hours, and for their professional and managerial staff, 48 hours. Part-time work is also regulated, on the basis of equality with full-time work.

In general, hours are determined by the employer and posted at the workplace, to apply to all with the exception of certain professional and managerial staff and some workers on individual schedules.

Since January 2000, professional and managerial staff have been divided into three categories for the purposes of the regulation of working hours:

• cadres dirigeants, top professional and managerial staff who are excluded from all regulation of working hours, except for annual holidays and maternity leave;
• cadres aux horaires collectifs, professional and managerial staff on collectively-determined hours, employed in a unit for which the hours applicable to all are fixed by the employer. To these apply, as to other employees, the legal provisions on overtime (in principle, no more than 130 hours a year), the maximum working day (10 hours) and the maximum working week (44 hours averaged across any 12 weeks);
• cadres au forfait, professional and managerial staff who contract for a maximum period of work over the year, where this is specifically provided by the company agreement. (When calculated over a week or a month, such a provision is not obligatory). The maximum period may be determined either in hours or days. In the first case the contract lays down the number of hours to be worked in the year, and the rules applying to overtime and maximum working periods apply.
  In the second case, when the period is defined in days, there is a legal maximum of 217 days; the rules on overtime and maximum working hours do not apply (except for a daily minimum of 11 hours rest per day, and a continuous period of 35 hour per week), but the agreement may provide limits on the variation of hours.

Employees have a right to holidays, paid by the employer, calculated on the basis of the period employed in the previous year (from 1st June to 31st May): two and a half working days per month worked, giving 5 weeks of annual leave.

There are also 11 bank holidays in the course of the year, generally not worked and paid for by the employer. Other types of leave, paid or otherwise, are also provided for, for family events in particular.

To know more:

• Consult the French trade unions;
• http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr for the relevant legislation
• The French Ministry of Labour, for addresses and phone numbers of information services.