In search of a balance between labor demand and competitiveness, Germany is again considering introducing the four-day week, which has already been tried out in other European countries and is popular with some pioneering companies.
The issue is on the agenda of Europe’s largest economy at a time when a recession is looming, making employers cautious. Others see this crisis as an opportunity for radical change.
On Friday, Maximilian Hermann puts on his motorcycle helmet and goes on a “trip” to the Bavarian Alps, if he doesn’t leave for the weekend “on Thursday evening.”
The 29-year-old project manager plans to install heat pumps and air conditioning systems from KlimaShop!, a 30-person company based near Augsburg in Bavaria (South).
Like all his colleagues, he introduced a four-day week and 38 instead of 40 hours a week at the beginning of January.
The employees now work an hour and a half more over four days in order to have their Friday off with the same salary.
For his colleague Michael Pankoke, the change is synonymous with “great progress”: “You work much more intensively, everything you do is more precise,” the 58-year-old customer advisor told AFP.
Experiment
At the annual collective bargaining for the steel industry, which begins in mid-November, the powerful IG Metall is calling for the introduction of the four-day week, by reducing the weekly workload from 35 to 32 hours and equal pay.
Work organization consultancy Intraprenör will conduct the first major experiment in Germany in collaboration with 4 Day Week Global, which has already conducted similar studies in several developed countries, particularly the United Kingdom.
At the beginning of 2024, 50 companies of different sizes and industries will have to test the reduction of working hours with the same pay for six months with the aim of maintaining productivity. Intraprenör, which has “abolished” Fridays for its own employees since 2016, says it currently has 33 applications from interested companies.
It is becoming more and more common for employers to take this step.
Wolfgang Schmidt, founder of a mechanical engineering company near Hamburg (North), says he introduced the 38-hour week at the end of 2022 to “save gas and money” for his 30 employees who travel about 100 km. per day”.
In the same region, the city of Wedel decided to introduce a four-day week to attract “competent and motivated” brokers.
In addition to a better “work-life balance” and “higher productivity,” the creation of jobs would mean that Germany could end “one of the highest rates of part-time employment in Europe,” emphasizes labor manager Sophie Jänicke Hours in the management of IG Metall.
According to a study by the Hans Böckler Foundation, 81% of Germans who work full-time would like a four-day week.
“Unrealistic dream”
While in Belgium, since the end of 2022, employees who wish to do so have been able to request to work the same number of hours over four days instead of five, in Germany the law allows employers and employees the freedom to set the working hours, on average 39 hours per week, until to 48 hours.
But the enthusiasm of some is being dampened by many bosses and economists, including Holger Schäfer, who estimates that a reduction in working hours “in the order of 20%” would have “catastrophic economic consequences.”
While “limiting unproductive activities and condensing work” is still feasible in office work, in industry “all possibilities for increasing productivity or efficiency have already been exhausted,” emphasizes the expert from the IW Economic Institute in Cologne.
Given the deepening “labor shortage” that accompanies the retirement of baby boomers, a reduction in working hours “will inevitably lead to a reduction in the amount of goods and services produced,” he warns.
In order to counteract the shortage of qualified workers, the head of the IW, Michael Hüther, recommends an extension of working hours instead of this “unrealistic dream of four days a week”.