Will a four-day work week solve Germany's labour shortage?
aljazeera.com
aljazeera.com
However its worth pointing out that the 40h work week was considered hugely radical and was “cutting the nose” off of the Ford motor company business when it was introduced.
The other auto-makers followed shortly after and eventually it became a standard for nearly every working person on a salary. That was less than a hundred years ago, and as mentioned it was extremely radical at the time losing up to 50% of weekly working time for Ford (60hrs was average at the time)- yet we seem unable to stomach 20% reduction despite massively improved productivity and a much more “bursty” working environment than was conventional in manufacturing.
Not only that, the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, etc were created because there was an oversupply of labor due to massive immigration from europe in the 19th century. These legal and cultural shifts occurred to open up more jobs to the unemployed. Else society would break down.
Germany had an influx of millions of immigrants the past few years. How could they possibly have a labor shortage? And how would a 4 day work week solve a labor shortage? It makes no sense. You force people to work less to open up more jobs. The work needed stays the same. If a worker works less, then another worker needs to make up the rest.
Very simple, we just have laws forbidding immigrants to work. It’s a tragedy.
And then we complain about immigrants being a burden upon the social safety net.
And then we discuss forcing them into more or less silly labor for less than 1€/h.
German immigration policy over the last 20 years has been and is continuing to be a joke.
Oh, and we continue to wonder why no “skilled” people are willing to migrate to Germany.