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Bavaria: Minister Ulrike Scharf wants daily working hours of more than ten hours

2022-11-30T11:22:00.341Z


A maximum of ten hours a day – and eleven hours of rest at a time: Working hours in Germany are strictly regulated. Bavaria now wants to relax the maximum daily working hours.


Enlarge image

Bavaria's Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Ulrike Scharf, wants to shake up the nationwide maximum working time

Photo: Tobias Hase / picture alliance / dpa

First of all, the initiative sounds contradictory: Longer working days - for a better compatibility of family and work?

Employers' associations and the skilled trades have been demanding this for years.

They are not concerned with overtime, but with employees being able to organize their work more freely.

Just in time for the consultations of the labor and social affairs ministers of the federal states this Wednesday in Saarland, Bavaria is now also referring to the rigid statutory working hours - and wants to introduce a working day of more than ten hours.

"We finally have to adapt the working time laws to the reality of people's living environments," said Labor and Social Affairs Minister Ulrike Scharf (CSU) of the "Rheinische Post".

"We need more flexibility in order to be able to combine family with work - that also increases the employment rate." Accordingly, a first important step is to allow working times of more than ten hours for individual working days a week on a voluntary basis and in compliance with employee protection .

A weekly working time of 24 hours can be spread more flexibly over two days.

more on the subject

  • Affected people on the recording of working hours: »The work cannot be done in 40 hours per week« Recorded by Florian Gontek and Franca Quecke

  • Federal Labor Court: Timekeeping becomes mandatory in Germany

  • Obligation to record working hours: finally overtime again! A comment by Florian Gontek

More flexible days, not permanently longer

Up to now, the German legislature has put a stop to working hours of more than ten hours: Eight hours a day is the maximum permissible working time; it can be extended to a maximum of ten hours, but only if appropriate time off is granted.

There must be eleven hours of rest between the end of work and the start of work.

For years, therefore, there has been talk of the tight German working time corset.

Companies, employers' associations, the Central Association of German Skilled Trades, but also parties such as the FDP are therefore calling for the Working Hours Act to be relaxed - and for example to set a maximum weekly working time instead of the daily working time.

Bavaria had already announced in 2019 that it wanted to make the statutory working time regulations more flexible with an initiative in the Bundesrat.

At that time, it was said that many employees wished they could take a break from work for a few hours for the sake of the family, do the last professional work in the evening and start work as usual the next day.

Prevent the shortage of skilled workers

The Bavarian Minister of Labor, Scharf, justifies the current demand with the lack of skilled workers in tourism, gastronomy and construction.

Companies would have to be able to deploy staff more flexibly in order to be able to maintain offers.

In the past, however, experts have repeatedly stated that permanent overtime is bad for your health.

faq/dpa/lby

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2022-11-30

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