Saskia Esken advocates a four-day week. Contradiction comes from the Union and the FDP – others welcome the SPD leader’s proposal.
SPD leader Saskia Esken’s demand for a four-day week including wage compensation has sparked discussions. Both the Union and the FDP express some sharp criticism. The deputy chairman of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Hermann Gröhe (CDU), warned that a four-day week would damage Germany’s economy. “Reducing working hours and making work more expensive in times of a shortage of skilled workers would do a disservice to competitiveness,” he told Berlin’s Tagesspiegel. “On the path of economic reason, the SPD leader is once again proving to be a wrong-way driver.”
The labor market policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Pascal Kober, told the newspaper that Esken’s proposal was “hard to understand” given the massive need for skilled workers in many sectors. The assumption that working would generally be more productive with the current four-day week is incorrect because many activities, especially in the care sector, police or medical care, require the employee to be present. “Where a four-day week can be agreed upon, employees and employers can arrange this themselves without having to resort to political advice.”
Esken: “Even if that sounds contradictory at first”
The co-chair of the SPD, Saskia Esken, has spoken out in favor of introducing a four-day week with full wage compensation. “I can well imagine that we will achieve good results with a four-day week,” Esken told the newspapers of the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” (Saturday edition).
You can well imagine that with one four day week can achieve good results. “Not only a better balance between life and work, but also to cope with the aging of society despite the shortage of skilled workers – even if that sounds contradictory at first,” said the SPD leader.
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There are studies “according to which people work more effectively in a week reduced to four working days because they have higher job satisfaction”.
Esken: “No more time because we work too much”
Esken argued that parents in particular need other, more flexible and shorter working hours in order to be able to organize their family obligations and needs better. “Certainly you need wage compensation,” she added. Many people are already unable to live on their wages.
A four-day week would leave “more time to do things yourself that you need support for in the five-day stress,” said Esken. “Sometimes we no longer have time to organize our own lives because we work too much.”
DGB boss wants to decide depending on the industry
The chairwoman of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), Yasmin Fahimi, has welcomed proposals for the introduction of a four-day week. However, she saw no general solution in the “Interview of the Week” published on Saturday by Deutschlandfunk.
This must be “in every industry and above all it must be clarified and secured through collective agreements”. Fahimi said that the increasing concentration of working hours must also be accompanied by longer recovery periods. “But you can’t give a general answer to that.”
