Lecornu backs bill to let bakeries open on May Day, unions protest
Sébastien Lecornu bought baguettes on May Day to back a bill letting bakeries open if staff volunteer and are paid double. Unions say it weakens France’s only compulsory paid holiday.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu turned a village bakery in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, in south-central France, into a political stage on Friday, ordering several baguettes in front of cameras to promote a bill that would let bakeries and florists open on 1 May if staff volunteer in writing and are paid double.
The move collided with one of France’s most sensitive labor traditions. Under French law, 1 May is the country’s only public holiday that is both paid and compulsory for most employees, a status unions treat as a hard-won safeguard rather than a technicality. Bakers and florists can already open that day, but only if no employee works, a rule that bakers say creates legal uncertainty and can expose them to inspections and fines.
Lecornu had set up the confrontation weeks earlier. On 17 April, he announced that a bill would be introduced before the end of the month after meeting with bakers and florists, then later said the government would not fast-track the measure. The proposal has since split the political class, with left-wing parties and trade unions denouncing any exception to the May Day rest rule. Union leader Marylise Léon publicly criticized Lecornu’s bakery stop, and former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal also broke with the government by deploring its decision.
The government is casting the bill as a practical response to everyday life. Officials say bakers are “indispensable to the continuity of social life,” a claim rooted in the role bakeries play in neighborhoods across the country. One widely cited government report says about half of France’s population lives within 1.4 miles of a bakery, while in cities about 73% of residents live within less than half a mile. That reach helps explain why a small holiday rule can provoke such a large reaction.
The controversy also lands at a politically loaded moment. May Day is France’s main Labor Day demonstration date, and the annual rallies have long served as a public test of the relationship between government and organized labor. With inflation still squeezing household budgets, the dispute has become about more than bread and flowers. It has become a test of whether the Macron-era state is willing to reopen labor protections in the name of flexibility, even on the one day many workers still see as sacred.
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