Lidl is testing a four-day week for employees in Austria

Created: 04/13/2022, 18:11

The discounter Lidl introduces the four-day week in Austria.

However, the offer is not aimed at all employees.

© Michael Gstettenbauer/Imago

Working four days a week instead of five: the discounter Lidl wants to introduce this for its employees in Austria – but not for everyone.

Salzburg – A long weekend or one day off a week is what many people wish for.

This is possible in Belgium, where the four-day week* was introduced.

A British company also introduced the four-day week in 2021.

The discounter Lidl now wants to make this possible for its Austrian employees.

Lidl has 5,800 employees there.

In its report on the 2021 financial year, Lidl Austria announced that it wants to test a four-day week for office workers, the Lebensmittel-Zeitung reports.

According to this, employees can work their 38.5 hours in a shortened working week.

They are also entitled to a sixth week of vacation, which has long been the norm in Germany for people who have worked in the same company for 25 years.

However, there is no four-day week offer for employees in the Lidl branches in Austria.

Instead, the discounter increased the minimum salary for them to 2090 euros gross on March 1st.

Lidl did not tell the Lebensmittel-Zeitung exactly what office workers at Lidl would have to do in order to be able to take advantage of the four-day week offer.

It is unclear which criteria Lidl employees have to meet for the four-day week

"As a responsible employer, we offer a lot to get the best employees.

The list of our incentives is long - from part-time and flextime models to sabbaticals to team events and company health care.

In 2022 we will expand and further improve our offer.

In addition to job security and fair wages, the desire for flexible working models is growing," it said.

According to a Forsa survey, 71 percent of Germans like the Belgian model of the four-day week.

However, the system is not unproblematic: in most cases, the daily working time increases to 10 hours.

This is not a real reduction in working hours, Markus Schlimbach from the Saxon German Trade Union Confederation told MDR.

“What is being introduced in Belgium is basically a ten-hour day.

As trade unions, we don't see that as an alternative.

We are in favor of real reductions in working hours and with the 35-hour week we have set out to make these reductions in working hours.” (ter) *