Reduced working hours: the fairy tale of the saving four-day week

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Lots of jobs, but too few staff to be able to handle them all - Stefan Klötzing no longer wants to accept this problem.

The owner of the electrical and heating specialist of the same name in Berlin has therefore decided on a new model to attract additional employees.

He has printed an advertisement on the company vehicles: He is looking for electricians - and offers them a four-day week.

It is an attempt to stand out from the competition in the fight for rare skilled workers.

“I hope that I can convince such young people to start with me.

For many it is important to have more time for family and hobbies, ”says Klötzing.

In fact, it is a model that many workers dream of: to work only four instead of five days a week and instead be able to devote more time to private matters.

If companies make this possible, it can be a competitive advantage for them in the labor market.

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In these days there is also another argument to promote the four-day week: the possibility of saving jobs by reducing working hours.

Not only the corona crisis, but also the upcoming transformation in parts of industry is putting many companies under pressure.

The idea: instead of shedding jobs, employees could work less.

Wages should not fall to the same extent

Saving jobs, making employees happy - the four-day week seems to be the panacea.

But hopes are aroused that are deceptive for the majority of workers.

IG Metall is currently drumming particularly loudly for the four-day week.

In the collective bargaining round for the largest German industry with 3.8 million employees, the metal and electrical industry, the union wants to enforce it as a solution for companies plagued by crises.

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In the automotive industry, for example, many companies are facing enormous upheavals due to the rise of the electric motor.

Certain jobs are becoming obsolete - but instead of laying off some of the employees, the workforce could alternatively work less, according to IG Metall's demand.

In this way, companies could gain time to adapt and train their employees.

The wages should not fall by a fifth, but should at least be partially offset.

The Greens share the enthusiasm for this vision.

Even more: they hope to be able to combine the various advantages.

Having time for oneself or family is an ever greater value for many people, writes the party in its recently presented draft of the election manifesto for the federal election.

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Shorter working hours, as proposed by IG Metall as a contribution to overcoming structural change, could “be an opportunity to distribute work more fairly, to secure jobs and to relieve workers”, it says in the paper.

In addition, they want to redesign the “rigid full-time” - “to an optional working time between 30 and 40 hours with a flexible working time corridor”.

Employees must have a perspective in the company

Experts doubt that all of this can be combined.

"All the registers of working time policy are pulled at the same time," says Enzo Weber, responsible for macroeconomic analyzes at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) of the Federal Employment Agency.

"For many companies, however, this mixture of different goals will not work out so easily."

He regards the approach of keeping employees in crisis-plagued companies beyond short-time working by reducing working hours as unhelpful with a view to the economy as a whole.

There must be a clear prospect for the employees that they will have a place in the company in the long term.

“That is often not the case with those struggling with the transformation,” he explains.

If working time is used for further training or new qualifications, financial support from the state makes sense.

In addition, it is problematic to simply increase hourly wages, as would de facto be the case with a four-day week with partial wage compensation.

“In industry, wages are fundamentally linked to productivity.

Deviating from this upwards is not financially viable for most companies, ”says Weber.

This can work in individual cases.

In highly competitive areas, companies are forced to deliver attractive offers in order to get skilled workers at all, says Lydia Malin from the Competence Center for Securing Skilled Workers at the employer-related Institute of the German Economy (IW).

"With the usual offers such as Christmas and vacation pay alone, this will be difficult."

But really reducing working hours by a fifth does not always work.

This is evident even in the well-running Klötzing electrical company in Berlin.

The boss has only reduced the weekly working time of 38 hours by two hours, but distributes them differently over the days.

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So far, his employees worked eight hours Monday through Thursday and six hours on Friday.

With the new division, there are now nine hours each in the first four days of the week and zero on Friday.

It is not a classic four-day week in which the work is reduced by a fifth while the salary remains the same.

And that is not just a question of costs: unlike in crisis-ridden companies, it is also problematic for companies with a shortage of skilled workers that the already rare commodity, labor, is further reduced by a four-day week.

According to the Central Association of German Crafts (ZDH), such a model for some employees also eliminates the volume of working hours that have to be absorbed with additional staff.

Individual companies can perhaps attract enough people in this way.

Overall, however, the bottlenecks are increasing.

IAB researcher Weber believes that the fact that employees can compensate for this because the majority of them become more productive due to the reduced working hours, as individual model projects have shown, is a misconception.

“There is a point at which people become less productive.

However, this is usually not yet achieved with a normal 38-hour week. "

Part time should become a lot more natural

The scientist sees another, hitherto underestimated way of how the dream of reduced working hours can be implemented on a large scale: by making use of the already existing right to part-time work.

And by improving the ability to adjust working hours over the course of a lifetime.

“If you want to reduce your working hours, you should do it this way.

But that also means: If you work 80 percent, you only get 80 percent wages. "

The researcher would find it useful to press ahead with this option.

“There are a lot of full-time employees who would like to work a little less,” he says.

An important indicator here is what is known as overemployment.

What is meant is the proportion of those in employment who want to reduce their working hours.

An IAB analysis from 2018 shows that women are overemployed at around 40 percent, and that for men is around 50 percent.

According to Weber, the German economy has a basic problem here: part-time usually means drastically reducing working hours - i.e. working 20 hours a week or even less.

However, career advancement is often inhibited part-time.

“Being able to work five or ten percent less is still an option for very few,” says Weber.

According to the researcher, it should be - just as there should be the possibility of dividing up working hours more freely than before.

Because: "Due to the rigid working time norms, the labor market is currently losing a lot of potential, especially for women," explains Weber.

After a family phase, many did not return full-time.

"If it is possible to become more flexible here, women will be much more involved and be able to make a career."

Not only men, but women as well, have signed up for the four-day offer for electrical installers at the electrical company owner Klötzing.

He didn't hire them, he says, because they were overqualified.

His hope for more staff through the four-day week has not yet been fulfilled.