By Jane Slaughter
On October 1, the 3 million member German metalworkers' union, IG Metall, will achieve the goal it set back in 1977 — the 35-hour week at 40 hours' pay. A strike in 1984 resulted in the first cut, to 38.5 hours, and successive contracts since then have gradually shortened work time in the steel, car and related industries.
The short work week "saves jobs and reduces stress", says Achum Bigus, who works at a supplier to Volkswagen. But Bigus and others feel that IG Metall has been too accommodating to employers' demands in the transition to shorter work time.
The short work week was among the issues discussed at a March conference in Germany sponsored by the Transnationals information Exchange (TIE). Workers from 13 countries attended, the majority of them metalworkers.
IG Metall left the negotiation of new work schedules to the works councils at each individual company. Works councils are bodies, mandated by law, that exist in each company to negotiate working conditions with management. In the metal sector, the works councils are dominated by slates of IG Metall members, but they are not official union bodies.
Works councils react to management's changes and proposals and attempt to bargain over them. By law, their mandate is to represent the interests of the whole company.
Because the works councils are by nature company-centred, the pressure always exists for union members on the councils to adapt to the competitive needs of their own plant.
With each works council left to come up with its own plan, the result has been a wide range of methods for implementing shorter work time.
The current 36-hour week is only an average over the year. In some plants, the work day has been shortened to 7.2 hours; another method is to work eight hours Monday-Thursday and four hours on Friday. Perhaps the most common method is for plants to schedule days off scattered throughout the year.
Bigus' company is demanding seasonal work, depending on its customer's needs. Employees would work over 40 hours part of the year and short hours the rest.
Some union activists feel that this "flexibility" means less worker unity, as the experience of workers in different plants becomes less similar. Heiner Kohnen of TIE-Germany says, "Whenever you get Germans from different car companies together they start fighting because everyone's experience is different".
Perhaps a bigger problem is that the union was shortening work time at the same time employers were beginning their push for lean production and flexibility. Like companies everywhere, employers in Germany are looking for ways to get more out of their investment in equipment by intensifying the pace of work and by keeping their factories going around the clock.
The works councils, each negotiating separately, have gone along with this strategy. They have allowed employers to introduce new schedules that mean irregular hours and irregular days off. Many employers want Saturday, for example, to be a regular work day, at straight time.
Back in 1984, when IG Metall was campaigning hard for shorter hours, its posters featured a child saying, "On Saturday, Daddy belongs to me". Nowadays, the mention of Daddy's whereabouts on Saturdays makes union officials uncomfortable.
One steelworker said that in his plant, management has increased the number of different shifts, with fewer people on each shift. This means the smaller number of people have to work harder.
In addition, the works council agreed that workers could work overtime on their days off — meaning no increase in jobs, only in overtime.
Complicating the discussion around the short work week is the situation at Volkswagen. Last year, Volkswagen, facing slow sales, demanded that its 108,000 employees accept a four-day week — with a matching pay cut. If the union refused, said VW, it would lay off 30,000 people.
The union accepted; it was the first time a cut in hours had been accompanied by pay concessions.
Despite the flaws in implementation, the shortening of the work week has, of course, put the union in a stronger position. Achum Bigus explained, "We should fight for 35 hours well shared, that is, distributed in a good work schedule. But 35 hours poorly shared is better than 40 hours well shared.
"Shorter work time means lower unemployment, which means the union has more leverage to fight the employers' other attacks. Without shorter work time, we'd be in much weaker shape to fight lean production and flexibilisation."
Beatrix Sassermann, a member of the chemical workers union, pointed out that although shorter working time and speed-up are happening at the same time, shorter work time is not the cause of speed-up. Her union has not won shorter hours, but the chemical companies are certainly pushing hard on productivity.
Bigus said, "The employers claim that the short work week causes the need for flexibility. We say, 'Yes, in the same way that higher wages 'cause' higher prices. Whenever workers make a gain, employers feel compelled to counterattack to maintain their profits."
While the shorter work week has slowed job cuts, it has not stopped them. IG Metall says that when the average work week is cut from 36 hours to 35 in October, 50,000 jobs in the metal sector will be saved.
But workers at the TIE conference pointed to big job losses. Mercedes-Benz, for example, will have cut 40,000 jobs from its car and truck plants in the period December 1992-December 1995, despite shorter working time. Meanwhile, car production has increased from 500,000 units to 590,000.
Although the employers' drive for lean production came later to Germany and the rest of Europe than to North America and Japan, companies are clearly trying to make up for lost time.
Bigus gives an example: "Recently the employers' federation was asked, 'What's your plan for the future — do you want to do it like VW or like IBM?' IBM had just gotten a 10% pay cut, still at 40 hours.
"They answered, 'Both. We want the flexibility to do either one.'"
[From Labor Notes (USA).]