| Summary: | The article focuses on the origin of time standards for work. On one hand, it demonstrates that these reflect a society’s general orientations and evolving awareness of temporalities, as well as its mobilisation of union and worker movements without which it is impossible to reduce working hours. On the other hand, time standards also originate in local dynamics, notably where this involves companies, social relations but also production types that help to define the rules by which social time are actually governed. The paper starts by retracing the emergence of workers’ right to free time, which continues to depend on social developments. We then address how employees spend their time in work situations and discover a number of ongoing tensions. Lastly, we argue that the shift from decreed to negotiated time opens up a space for discussion that, under certain conditions, might lead to a new time policy that is more in tune with workplace needs.
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