At present, an officer can theoretically claim a minimum four-hour overtime payment.

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Each employee would sign a "voluntary overtime affidavit, " in order to waive the 36-hour legal limit on your monthly overtime hours.

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He plans to liberalise the 35-hour week by exonerating all overtime from payroll charges and income tax.

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Instead of the usual five-day workweek, employees work four ten-hour shifts per week, with no overtime.

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It also could help stem the tide of wage-and-hour cases that have seen courts award overtime to such traditionally exempt employees as stockbrokers and loan officers.

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Sarkozy's main tenets: revamp French overtime, make mortgage interest deductible, abolish the 35-hour workweek and decrease corporate taxes.

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He pushed through upper-income tax cuts, deregulated incorporation laws, cut public sector pensions, raised the retirement age and killed taxes on overtime pay to incentivize longer hours, undermining the 35-hour workweek.

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An overtime ban is set to begin on 26 March followed by a 24-hour strike on 2 April.

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The average workweek inched up 0.1 hour to 34.5 hours in February, with increases in the manufacturing workweek and factory overtime.

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And France's 35-hour legislation is full of loopholes: employers and unions in the engineering sector recently agreed to increase overtime and average weekly work-hours over the whole year.

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