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After several proposals were made to introduce a four-day work week throughout the German economy, the media began to investigate whether the proposal was realistic. There seems to be a portion in it, but of course you don’t eat this hot porridge either.
Germany’s largest union, IG Metell, which also represents employees of BMW, Audi and Porsche, proposed the introduction of a 28-hour workweek in negotiations on new collective agreements, followed by the radical left-wing Die Linke party. , which said 30 A one-hour workweek should be introduced, recalls an article on the German Internet portal The Local that followed the reality of the proposal.
The first thing to note is that IG Metall and Die Linke do not have the same vision, although they have so much in common that many workers in Germany feel that the 40-hour work week does not meet current needs. Parents raising their children in particular feel a great burden on them. This may explain the growing popularity of part-time employment: while in 1990 the share of full-time and part-time jobs was eight to two, today it is six to four for this pair of numbers.
At the same time, the disadvantage of working part-time is that it negatively affects, reduces the pensions of people in Hungarian and can make those who work in this way dependent on others. This is especially true for women who choose to do so due to parenthood. The reason for this is also not found in traditional gender roles, but in the fact that men’s salary is generally higher, which is why couples prefer to keep it full.
The pioneer
IG Metall has pioneered the reduction of working hours. In the automotive sector, a 35-hour workweek was introduced at his initiative in 1990 and recommended in 2018 for employees to choose the 28-hour workweek. However, it should be noted that both changes were accompanied by salary cuts. Jörg Horrmann did not justify the current proposal with what was said above, the need to achieve a better balance between the time that people dedicate to work and their free time. On the contrary, he cited the gigantic changes that had started in the auto industry.
The advancement of electric mobility has already led to layoffs, and since electric car production requires less labor, this could continue if nothing is done to protect jobs. The union, by the way, does not propose a generalized reduction in working hours, but would only give companies the opportunity to incorporate this rule in future collective agreements. An example would be Volkswagen’s solution, which retained its employees during a deep crisis in the 1990s by cutting the workweek at its factories to 28.8 hours, according to the union.
The radical
Die Linke justifies its proposal by introducing a 30-hour workweek for the entire economy in two circumstances. One is the advancement of digitization, which renders much of human labor superfluous, but if workers worked less, jobs could still be preserved. The other is that the full remaining job opportunities nationwide could be more fairly and equitably distributed among the people.
According to labor experts, the first reason is the problem that digitization does not actually lead to less work. If we invest more in the training of people and in the discipline of new types of job offer, unemployment will decrease despite the expansion of digitization, says labor researcher Enzo Weber.
It’s not the same
There are several problems with the other reason. One is that a company does not have the same person to hire or dismantle its work in three. In the latter case, more training is needed, conciliation is more difficult due to holidays and illnesses, there may be more fluctuations, in a word, this solution is more expensive while those involved would receive less pay.
The other problem is that the idea of a certain workload sees the entire economy as a midsize company well integrated with its markets, customer base, and technology, and consequently, the workload to be performed in the company can be give over a long period of time. On the contrary, the demand for labor in the economy is constantly changing. Today, for example, the problem is not that the same amount of work must be distributed among more people as Die Linke assumes, but that there is little workforce and therefore it is necessary to hire guest workers for the labor market.
From all this, the bottom line is that introducing a four-day workweek may be a rational goal, but only after a while. When the skills of the employees have improved and, therefore, their efficiency and therefore the demand for labor of the economy decreases. Shorter work hours are a good idea for those who want that, Weber explains, but we must not allow digitization to dictate how people work. According to the expert, it would therefore require more flexibility in the forms of employment than introducing a general reduction in working hours for all.
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