French moves to end Sabbath

Press, 21 August 1979, Page 17

French moves to end Sabbath

By

PAUL WEBSTER,

“Observer,” London

S e v e n-day shopping banks and hypermarkets free to open all day Sunday is being recommended by the French Government, which will soon being negotiations with unions and traders. A decision by the end of the year has been promised by the Trade Minister, Maurice Charettier. who believes that big commercial enterprises will generalise Sunday trading whether it is legal or not. It is understood that two specially commissioned Government reports are strongly in favour of ending restrictions. The main opponents are trade unions speaking for two million workers in the retail • trade and small shopkeepers’ associations who. have fought pitched battles over the last few years in an attempt to stop the spread of supermarkets and Sunday tradihg. A typical French Sunday, however, shows that the opposition is in the minority. Traditional lastmonth fresh food buying from the local market and corner store has spread to the stage where virtually anything can be bought if the customer knows where to go. Big furniture and household goods discount

stores, particularly defy laws restricting their opening hours to six days a week, accepting regular fines of up to $2OOO rather than close. They claim that an average 30 per cent of their turnover is done on Sunday. At one of France's biggest commercial centres, Art de Vivre, west of Paris, opened two years ago, Sunday shoppers can buy just about anything from a garden rake to a

three-piece suite in a complex which includes restaurants. .cafeterias and discotheques. “The atmosphere here is like any other family outing except that there’s lots more to do and see,” a salesman said. "Food hypermarkets, banks and department stores are about the only big businesses which have not broken the Sunday trading law, although most local food supermarkets are now open. But the big businesses are included in the Trade Minister’s plans, which would allow all companies to fix their own opening hours. As there is nothing like

Britian’s Lord's Day Observance Society, the Gov- > ernment is faced only r with reassuring trade unions and finding some i way to compensate small traders, the most reactionary voters in France, In spite of a common front by Communist, Socialist and autonomous unions, who say they are, determined to maintain a compulsory closing day, ; their position is fairly i weak. There is poor union

representation in big stores, which depend almost entirely on temporary staff. However, they feel that this may be the last chance to halt a shopping revolution in which shopworkers’ interests would not count at all. "The bosses are putting a system in place for year 2000,” said Marc Blondel, shopworkers' representative in the Force Ouvriere. “Eventually everything will be done from a computer at home linked to a central computer. If the machine decides that the only way to satisfy customers is to bring in staff at six in the morning, then that is what the bosses will want.”