When hundreds of employees of a chain of furniture shops held a protest near Paris recently in favour of working on Sundays, a union militant derided them as “collabos”, the term used for collaborators with the Nazi occupation during the war.

It seemed a bit extreme, but few subjects stir French tempers as much as Sunday and whether or not to let people work – and shop – on what many still refer to here as “the Lord’s Day”.

All-week shopping may seem normal in Britain, but President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to permit it in France, where a bill is to be put before parliament early next year, are meeting stiff resistance from the country’s powerful unions and Socialist politicians.

Having lost the battle to protect special pension privileges that allow some workers to retire as young as 50, they are turning Sunday into the latest battlefield in the campaign to stop “Sarko” and save France from “Anglo-Saxon” free-market misery.

“In my view there is already too much consumerism,” said Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Socialist parliamentary leader. “We need to preserve spaces in life for sport and culture as well.”

Edmond Hervé, Socialist mayor of Rennes, in northwest France, raised similar objections: “A human being should not be reduced to a buying machine.”

The hyperactive Sarkozy has frequently made clear his commitment to letting shops open on Sundays as part of his “work more, earn more” philosophy.

“Apparently some consider it strange that working people should want to shop when they have the time to do so,” he said earlier this year. In a television interview last month he advocated double pay for people working on Sundays. “If the employee is willing to work, if the shop owner is willing to open, why prevent them?”

With some exceptions – shops providing “urgent” needs such as food are exempt – Sunday trading is outlawed in France under a century-old labour code that decrees a day of rest for all workers.

But in a land that is deeply attached to its leisure, the consumer reflex has been strengthening and opinion polls show three-quarters of the public to be in favour of Sunday shopping. The figure is even higher among the young.

“Of course shops should be open on Sunday,” said Laura Brunier, a 20-year-old business student browsing for clothes on Friday on the fashionable Avenue Montaigne. “I just don’t have the time to go shopping during the week or on Saturdays. It would make life so much easier if I could go shopping on Sunday.”

Most other shoppers seemed to agree, among them Stéphanie Santos, a 39-year-old mother of two looking for Christmas presents in the Bon Marché department store last week.

“Why can’t we be more like London or New York?” she asked. “I get so fed up with this country. The government shouldn’t have a role in deciding when we should shop. It’s ridiculous and harmful for Paris’s image. If people are willing to work on Sunday, they should be allowed to.”

Under exceptions to the 1906 labour law, some shops are permitted to operate on five Sundays a year and often open on the Sundays leading up to Christmas. Shops dedicated to sport, DIY and gardening are allowed to trade on Sundays. The law also lets shops do business if they are run by the owner and family members.

Some mayors, however, such as Hervé in Rennes, have banned all Sunday commerce in their cities.

“We have to respect family life and family values,” he said. “We have to protect our quality of life. It is what makes society civilised.”

Union officials worry that only big chains would have enough staff to stay open on Sundays, forcing France’s cherished local shops out of business. Over the past few years the unions have shut down 150 Sunday traders after taking them to court.

The main argument of the unions is that Sunday opening allows management to exploit underpaid staff. That argument has been undermined, though, by the protest of 300 workers at the Conforama furniture chain in September: they were outraged by a court’s refusal to let three branches in the Val d’Oise district, north of Paris, stay open on Sunday.

Other retailers have had better luck in fighting the ban: after unions tried to shut it down on Sundays, the Louis Vuitton shop on the Champs-Elysées persuaded a judge that the fashion museum upstairs made it a “place of cultural significance”. That qualified it to open on Sundays.

Sarkozy is determined to make France more competitive and, besides championing work on Sundays, recently proposed measures that would in effect demolish the 35-hour working week, considered the crowning achievement of the last Socialist administration.

The French economy was expected to grow just 2% next year – less than the 2.2% average in the European Union – but union officials challenged the idea that Sunday shopping would help to promote growth.

“If we let some shops open on Sundays,” said a statement from the powerful CGT union, “the others will soon follow suit to avoid being beaten by the competition. So nobody will win.” Except the consumer, perhaps.

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