A survey by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) suggests that the German government's planned working-time reform would benefit only a small number of companies if implemented as currently proposed.
The government wants to make working hours more flexible as part of its reform agenda, allowing daily working time to exceed 10 hours in individual cases.
But only a third of companies said they needed greater flexibility to extend the daily working time beyond the 10-hour limit, the IAB said. And when collective bargaining coverage was taken into account, just 9% of firms were both covered by collective agreements and had a need for greater flexibility.
Labour Minister Bärbel Bas wants the measure to apply only to companies covered by collective bargaining agreements.
IAB researcher Enzo Weber said this showed that restricting the flexibility measure to collectively bound companies - as proposed by Bas' Social Democratic Party (SPD) - would not deliver the desired outcome.
The IAB surveyed 9,300 companies as part of its job vacancy survey for the first quarter.
Weber instead proposed an agreement between employees and employers that would define rights and obligations and include, for example, health monitoring.
Collective bargaining parties should be granted priority rights, he said. However, the framework should also be binding on companies not covered by collective agreements, allowing them to benefit from the added flexibility as well — provided they comply with clear and enforceable rules, he argued.
