The Forgotten History of Individualized Hours: From Chosen De-synchronization to Enterprise Flexibility

Flextime by individual choice has been invented in businesses during the 1960s. However, the reasons for this introduction were more related to the labor market, to management of staff and fluidity of urban traffic. Desynchronization of temporalities by individuals has not failed to challenge employers and trade unions criticism of this measure. This social innovation sparked debate between lawyers and opponents of individualization. It has led to technological innovations on how to measure time. The trend of half a century has led to the generalization of codetermination of working hours by employees themselves, but it did not prevent the existence of major disagreements on implementation: the control of the individual time-schedule employment for oneself or flexibility for the company.