Part-time work in France: pay, additional hours and your rights

Part-time work is not a second-class contract: the law frames its length, its extra hours and its rights, which are those of a full-timer. Whether you choose it or are offered it, this guide gives you the rules to check, a salary worked out for several schedules, what additional hours bring, and the two points most often forgotten: priority to return to full time, and your pension.

What part time is, and what the contract says

You are part time as soon as your working time is below the legal 35 hours a week, 151.67 h a month or 1,607 hours a year, or below the collective-agreement working time if it is shorter. The contract must be in writing and state your qualification, your pay, your weekly or monthly hours, how your hours are spread across days or weeks, when that spread can change and the limit on additional hours. A contract with nothing in writing is presumed full time: it is up to the employer to prove otherwise.

The minimum hours

Unless a sector agreement sets another threshold, part-time work means at least 24 hours a week, or 104 hours a month. There are exceptions: very short contracts, replacing an absent employee, working for a private household, a written and reasoned request from the employee for personal constraints or to combine jobs, a request from an employee old enough for phased retirement, and students under 26, who are entitled to reduced hours on request. Apart from that last case, the employer does not have to accept a request for an exception.

Pay, pro rata

Your pay is proportional to that of a full-timer in the same job, with the same qualification and length of service, unless an agreement or custom is more favourable: the hourly rate itself does not drop. For a job paid €2,500 gross a month full time, i.e. €1,957 net, the site's engine gives:

The floor follows the same logic: at the SMIC, 24 h a week gives €1,280 gross and €991 net a month (see the SMIC guide). Bonuses and benefits are generally prorated, unless the agreement or custom provides better. For your own hours, the part-time pay tool starts from the full-time gross or your share, and the gross-to-net converter takes your weekly hours directly.

Additional hours

Hours worked beyond your contract are not overtime but additional hours. They are limited to a tenth of your contractual hours, or a third if an agreement allows it, and can never bring your schedule up to the legal working week. Each one carries a premium from the first: 10% within the tenth, 25% beyond, unless an extended sector agreement sets another rate, never below 10%. You can refuse them if you are told less than 3 days in advance or if they exceed the contract's limits.

On a 24 h contract, a tenth is 2.4 h a week and a third 8 h. 2 h more a week, all with a premium of 10%, bring €157 gross and €124 net a month. At 4 h, only possible with an agreement, the average premium rises to 16.3% and the gain to €332 gross, €263 net. Like overtime, they benefit from a contribution reduction and an income tax exemption, detailed in the guide to overtime.

Not to be confused with a complément d'heures: a temporary increase in your hours, provided for by an extended sector agreement and signed as an amendment, at most 8 times a year, not counting cover for a named absent employee. Those hours may be paid without a premium; only hours worked beyond the increase carry a premium of at least 25%.

The same rights as a full-timer

• Leave and length of service: the same number of days of leave, service counted as if you worked full time, the same agreement-based rights unless an agreement sets specific terms.
• Probation: its calendar length cannot exceed a full-timer's; the guide to the probation period gives the caps.
• Priority: if you want to move to full time (or a full-timer wants to go part time), you have priority for a post in your category, and the employer must give you the list of available posts.
• End of contract: a career that has alternated full and part time in the company gives severance or retirement payments calculated pro rata for each period.

Pensions, the forgotten point

Your pension rights are calculated on the salary you pay contributions on: long-term part-time work therefore weighs on your pension. The law allows you to pay pension contributions on the basis of a full-time salary, with a written agreement dated and signed by you and your employer. The employer is not obliged to accept, nor to pay the extra employee share; if it covers part of it, the agreement says so. Raise it as soon as you go part time: that is when it is easiest to negotiate.

Before signing, negotiate in full-time gross terms and check the hourly rate, how the hours are spread and the limit on additional hours written in the contract. To find out whether that full-time gross is in line with your occupation, the estimate of what your CV is worth gives a benchmark calculated from market salaries.