Easterners Fight for Shorter Working Hours, but 35-Hour Workweek is a Myth

Flushed with its success in the steel-making sector, IG Metall, Germany's biggest industrial union, called for wider strike action this week in the metal and electrical engineering industries in eastern Germany.

On early Saturday morning the struggle in the East's steel industry was over. The workweek for the 8,000 eastern German steelworkers will be reduced gradually to 35 hours from the current 38 hours by April 1, 2009. The 35-hour workweek should be introduced in three stages, with the first reduction beginning April 1, 2005. IG Metall did agree to the concession, however, that the reduction in hours could be postponed by a year if the economy remains in bad shape.

Though victory has been secured for steel makers in the East, the conflict in the metalworking and electrical engineering industry rages on in eastern Germany, a region struggling with a fragile economy and high unemployment. Leading engineering companies in eastern Germany came to a standstill over the past week as IG Metall launched selective strikes to further its campaign to cut working hours to western German levels for all its members. Some 310,000 workers are employed in the eastern German metalworking and electrical engineering industry.

But Martin Kannegiesser, president of Gesamtmetall, the employers' bargaining agent for the metalworking and engineering sectors, is adamant that the concessions made for steel workers cannot be made for all of IG Metall's members. “Such a collective agreement is completely unthinkable for the metal and electrical engineering sectors, it would be completely destructive for eastern German industry," Kannegiesser said.

Part of the reason is that the labor cost ratio in the metal and electrical engineering sector is considerably higher than in the eastern German steel sector. Furthermore, in the steel sector only seven companies were affected, whereas the metal and electrical engineering industry in eastern Germany comprises mostly of small and medium-sized companies, which industry argues would be crushed if their sole competitive advantage, the longer workweek, was removed.

This stance was backed by Dieter Hundt, president of Germany's major employers' association, who is adamant that companies will not be bullied into providing the same concessions for the rest of IG Metall's eastern members. “Reduced working hours have already wreaked havoc in western Germany. Eastern Germany doesn't stand a chance if the workweek is shortened,“ Hundt said.

While the union is pressing for a reduction in the working week to 35 hours to bring the situation of eastern businesses into line with that of their counterparts in the West, IW Cologne, an industry financed think tank, has revealed that the 35-hour workweek is not a luxury enjoyed throughout all of western Germany.

According to IW, only one-fifth of all western German employees have a 35-hour workweek. Since a good one-third of all western German workers have to clock up 38 hours each week either on the factory floor of behind a desk, it is difficult for IG Metall to argue its case, the think tank says. The 40-hour workweek is a reality for 44 percent of all employees in eastern Germany.

Meanwhile, the association of Saxony's metalworking and electrical engineering industry, VSME, has filed suit against IG Metall's grassroots vote on strikes for the 35-hour workweek. The association accuses the union of not having attained the necessary 75 percent rate of approval. VSME has also asked the Dresden Labor Court to make a fundamental decision on whether a minority of a sector's employees should be allowed to decide on such economically important actions as strikes. According to VSME, the low rate of inclusion in collective bargaining contracts in the East meant that, in the end, fewer than 8 percent of all employees in the regional metalworking and electrical engineering industry were called to decide whether to call a sector-wide strike.