Martha, throw away the French tapes and unpack the suitecase. The French National Assembly approved a bill allowing employers to add additional hours in exchange for additional pay.

The bill effectively clears the way for the gradual erosion of the 35-hour week, a flagship policy of the former Socialist-led government that gave many people more time off but added to concerns about France’s declining global competitiveness. The shorter workweek was introduced on a voluntary basis in 1998 and made compulsory two years later in a bid to force employers to hire more people. But France’s current 10 percent jobless rate is testament to the policy’s failure to generate the promised millions of new jobs.