Pro and con
What speaks for a 35-hour week?
March 27, 2024, 4:51 p.m
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In the West German metal industry, the 35-hour week with constant wages has been in effect since 1996. At Deutsche Bahn, following an agreement with the train drivers’ union GDL, it is to be gradually introduced as an option by 2029. In view of the shortage of skilled workers, employers are sometimes calling for a return to the 40-hour week.
Per reduction in working hours
According to the assessment of Oliver Stettes, working world expert at the employer-related German Economic Institute (IW), it can make sense for individual companies to “offer shorter working hours if this is economically viable and organizationally feasible in order to increase its attractiveness for applicants.” However, it cannot be said in general terms whether this is expedient or possible.
Researcher Eike Windscheid-Profeta from the trade union Hans Böckler Foundation points to the positive effects of shorter working hours such as lower absenteeism and higher motivation among employees. According to analyses, the 35-hour week in the metal and electrical industry also had a positive effect on productivity. “Neither the existing pilots in connection with current projects relating to the 4-day week or 32-hour week (…) nor the experiences with shortening working hours in Germany in the past indicate that this is accompanied by a loss of prosperity,” summarizes Windscheid-Profeta together.
The working time consultant Guido Zander said in interviews that shortened working time models such as the four-day week could definitely work in individual companies and industries. However, a machine does not automatically run faster just because someone works less and is therefore perhaps more motivated. “It depends on what offsetting effects I have: If I have a very high sickness rate and can legitimately believe that it will go down if I reduce working hours, then that is of course a counter-financing element,” said Zander on SWR in January.
Against reducing working hours
Stettes sees no scope for collective reductions in working hours in the economy as a whole. “For example, in order to make a reduction from 40 to 32 hours per week economically viable, we actually need an increase in productivity of 25 percent per working hour,” argues the IW expert. Over the past decade, productivity growth in the economy as a whole has averaged less than one percent annually.
In addition: “As the baby boomers retire, we will lose a significant amount of working hours because the number of younger generations is simply smaller,” says Stettes. A collective reduction in working hours would further increase this decline. “This reduces the attractiveness of the location, which is already suffering from the fact that we have a shortage of skilled workers.” At the same time, the financing requirements for social insurance and public budgets would increase, argues the IW researcher: “Collective reductions in working hours would simply make us poorer.”
Timo Wollmershäuser from the Ifo Institute in Munich says that if working hours per capita are simply reduced, this will ultimately cost growth. It is therefore crucial that a reduction in weekly working hours goes hand in hand with other changes: for example with operational measures to increase productivity per working hour.
Stefan Kooths The Kiel IfW added that the currently active generation cannot be “very slender” when it comes to balancing leisure and work – otherwise the tax rate would have to keep rising. However, the state can create incentives to make extra work more worthwhile. In this way he could counteract the movement towards ever shorter working hours.
The Mechanical engineering association VDMA recently called for a quick course correction in view of the shortage of skilled workers. Germany can neither economically nor socially afford a general reduction in working hours – especially not with the same wages, said VDMA general manager Thilo Brodtmann in October.
Employer President Rainer Dulger had said at the beginning of the year: “A four-day week and then with full wage compensation is exactly the opposite of what we need in a time of massive shortage of skilled workers. We all feel that we can no longer cope with the tasks.” Considering that everyone worked even less as a solution would lead to the wrong result. In the SWR interview, working time expert Zander basically advocated for diversity in working time models – in both directions: “We are in such a complex environment that increasingly these simple “one size fits all” models no longer fit. That is always suggested, and it can fit, but it doesn’t have to fit.”