German Unions Call For Late Start To Workday During World Cup
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German companies are set to push their regular working hours later into the day during the 2014 FIFA World Cup, reported the Bild newspaper on Tuesday, after labour unions urged bosses to allow their football-mad employees to stay up late to catch the games.
German companies are set to push their regular working hours later into the day during the 2014 FIFA World Cup, reported the Bild newspaper on Tuesday, after labour unions urged bosses to allow their football-mad employees to stay up late to catch the games.
“Due to the time difference, many matches (during the World Cup) in Brazil will kick off after midnight German time,” said Michael Vassiliadis of IG BCE, a union representing the mining, chemicals and recycling industries.
“Employers and work councils should talk about rearranging shifts so that their staff can watch World Cup games,” he said.
Even some politicians have called on employers to give flexible working hours.
Wolfgang Steiger, head of the economic council of the ruling Christian Democratic Union, said: “We bosses should be able to accommodate our employees in matches where Germany is playing.”
[quote]Member of Parliament Thomas Jarzombek added: “Wherever it is possible, the company should be generous enough to move the morning shift backwards, so the World Cup will be like a midsummer fairy tale.”[/quote]According to Bild newspaper, some employers’ associations have already backed the proposal. Germany, alongside host Brazil and defending champions Spain, are among the favourites to win the World Cup.
Bloomberg pointed out that flexible working hours have long been a trademark of the German labour system. A 2012 study by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn explains how flexible working hours helped Germany avoid a massive spike in structural unemployment:
‘Internal flexibility is particularly attractive for employers in manufacturing industries with high and specific skills that are difficult to replace. … Most importantly, working time can be adjusted flexibly via working-time accounts.
“In these accounts, working hours can be accumulated over a relatively long time period. As this allows companies to react to changes in demand without hiring and firing, it favours a stability-oriented personnel policy and compensates for the effects of limited external flexibility (i.e. strict dismissal protection).
In fact, the economic crisis was preceded by a boom period in German manufacturing, so that many working-time accounts showed large surpluses which could be balanced after demand collapsed. Surpluses in working-time accounts and overtime declined significantly in the crises and therefore made an important contribution to employment stability. Whilst employment was virtually unchanged from late 2008 to late 2009, the total volume of hours worked declined by about 3 percent.’
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A 2011 study by the International Labor Office concluded also that flexible working conditions generally had a positive impact on productivity.
“Flexitime in particular was found to be the most powerful contributor to this indirect factor of worker productivity over the longer term,” the report said.
And Germany has been hailed as a good example of this: A 2012 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that Germany averaged the third-least number of hours worked per person of the 35 OECD countries surveyed, yet came in ninth in GDP per hour worked.
