In Germany it is again debated whether to work 4 days a week

AGI – The pandemic relaunches the debate on the 4-day working week in Germany. Many consider it the right remedy to maintain employment levels during and after the coronavirus emergency, and the issue is now on the table, risking becoming an electoral matter, in view of the 2021 policies.

The chairman of the influential metalworkers union IB Metall, Joerg Hoffmann, proposes that the four-day week be introduced as a ‘lifebuoy’ to save the occupation in a phase of acute growth in unemployment around the world. The Social Democratic Minister of Labor, Hubertus Heil, believes that “the reduction of working hours introduced with partial wages could be an appropriate measure”.

Reduced hours in response to changes

The starting idea, as the number one of IG Metall in the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung claims, is that working less you can share those jobs that tend to shrink. A measure of this type, explains Hofmann, would be a “response to structural changes in sectors such as the automotive industry “, which is facing the challenge ofelectric caras well as a remedy against “the digital acceleration due to the pandemic”. Furthermore, for Hofmann it could represent “a form of compensation“by employers to employees, so as to avoid significant loss of purchasing power of employees.

The union has been proposing the short week for some time

This isn’t the first battle IG Metall has fought to support the reduction in working hours. In 1995 it managed to impose the 35 hours per week in the sector e in 2018 it managed to allow workers to work 28 hours per week for two years, with a limited loss of wages. His latest proposal is supported by 60% of Germans, according to a survey by the Yougov company. The far-left party Die Linke goes further and proposes the introduction of a “general reduction of working hours to 30 hours” without loss of wages.

German entrepreneurs are against it

German entrepreneurs don’t like the idea of ​​shortening hours to avoid too many layoffs and they don’t consider it right. According to Steffen Kampeter, director of the Bda, the German Confindustria, such an initiative will only do “worsen the huge productivity shock“that the industry is already experiencing at present.” The longer the coronavirus crisis lasts, the more we will be forced to find smart solutions that are not limited to the distribution of wages or subsidies, “said Angela Merkel’s conservative party leader. , Carsten Linnemann.

Here are the solutions already adopted

Diverse large German companies like Bosch, ZF Friedrichshafen and Daimler just have concluded agreements to reduce working hours, while the negotiations continue their course at Continental or Airbus.

But in this case, the employees have to do remarkable financial sacrifices to work less.

The model is the four-day week adopted by Volkswagen in the early 1990s to save 30 thousand jobs threatened by the crisis in the sector. In theauto, hit hard by the crisis, the four-day compensated week would be “neither timely nor economically viable given the situation” in the industry, says Wilfried Porth, director of human resources at Daimler.

Merkel wants the social partners to decide

Angela Merkel’s government wants leave the decision on the matter in the hands of the social partners, as has always been the case in the German social tradition. For now, it is considering extending the duration of the partial unemployment benefit from 12 to 24 months, which allows to cushion the crisis for millions of employees. If unemployment does not fall rapidly, the debate on reducing working hours could become a major issue in the electoral campaign ahead of the next legislative elections in late 2021.

What happens outside of Germany

However, this debate on reducing working hours is not limited to Germany. In France, in addition to extending the partial unemployment scheme, there is the possibility of signing “collective benefits” agreements to organize working hours in order to save jobs, but in exchange for wage sacrifices. IS in Austria the Social Democratic Party proposed, according to the public TV channel Orf, a program to reduce working hours 20% with a parallel 5% reduction in net salary.

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