German industry pushes to restore 40-hour working week without extra pay

aanet•about 2 hours ago

I hope the German workers (can) negotiate to keep the 35 hour/week arrangement.

(I'm not German, nor do I work there).

and I hope somehow we are able to bring a less than 40 hour/week arrangement in the US.

Workers in the US work, by far, the most of any other country. And yet, only a relative few are able to afford quality medical care, and decent quality of life. (The workers in the tech sectors like Bay area, NYC, etc. are, IMHO, an outlier with respect to pay packages compared to the rest of the country.)

It's a devil's bargain: you either work your a* off, 60-80 hours/week, and hope to get paid $$$$ one day; or you work "reasonable" hours and get paid for a shitty qualify of life.

pipodeclown•about 2 hours ago

US workers most definately do not work the most of any country. Maybe relative to some rich western europeans you do but globally you are very much in the 'rich countries where the average working hours are quite low' category. There are even more than a few european countries with average working hours per worker that are higher than in the US.

yorwba•about 1 hour ago

You can also work fewer hours in the US if you make it your top priority and accept lower pay. That's how German manufacturing unions did it: They had the option to ask for less work or more pay, and they kept picking less work. Some collective bargaining agreements let each individual worker choose whether they want to work less or earn more. It's all tradeoffs.

alephnerd•43 minutes ago

Yeah, but Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indian employees work longer hours and get paid less.

Even ignore Asia - Poles, Czechs, and other CEE residents work longer hours than Germans yet are similarly as productive (based on GDP per capita) and have caught up developmentally.

OroPla•about 2 hours ago

Shouldn't AI help us push this down to 30h for everyone? Who in their right mind wants to work more? Most of the 40h week is wasted with doing pointless things anyway.

toomuchtodo•about 3 hours ago

https://archive.today/CO9nO

German industry pushes to restore 40-hour working week without extra pay

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