The demand for increasingly flexible working hours has existed for years - from both employers and trade unions. The model proposed in the current government's coalition agreement was already called for in 2018: the daily maximum working time of 8 hours is to be replaced by a weekly maximum working time. With rest periods of 11 hours between the end of one workday and the start of the next, a 13-hour workday would be conceivable. ---- We're not simply facing more flexible working hours, but rather a backdoor increase in working hours. The total hours worked have been steadily rising for over 20 years. What hasn't increased, however, is real wages, which are needed to pay for ever-increasing food costs and skyrocketing rents. Extending working hours won't change that!
While on the one hand we work more and more, and productivity has increased so dramatically for decades that we could easily provide a comfortable standard of living for the entire world population, less and less of the wealth we generate actually reaches us! Most of us barely make ends meet or are happy if we end up with nothing in our bank accounts at the end of the month. Our infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and more and more swimming pools and even bridges are being closed.
Nevertheless, we are expected to tighten our belts for what is sold to us as the common good, but is in reality corporate profit. In short, we cannot rely on the current political climate to change this in the long run!
While it's often claimed that employees also desire more flexibility, in reality it's implemented in a completely one-sided way. Not to mention that the desire for more flexible working hours is really just an adjustment to what's already normal in our society! We always have to be on call and available immediately when our bosses call, checking emails before and after work, and often working (unpaid) overtime when "the company" demands it.
Given complete freedom of choice, who would decide to spend the majority of their day working to the point where there's no time left for friends, family, housework, caregiving, or leisure? The pervasive shortage of everything already makes it difficult enough to find time for the good things in life: finding doctors is becoming increasingly difficult (and they themselves are often far too overworked), and despite the "guarantee" of one, getting a free daycare spot is virtually impossible! Even the commute to work, whether by car or train, with its congested roads and chronically delayed trains, is not only fraying one's nerves but also consuming more and more of one's life!
And where does the flexibility come in when employees call in sick, take vacation, or simply want to work fewer hours? Often, such attempts end with already overworked colleagues taking on the leftover work because there are never enough people hired to handle all the tasks. Instead of recognizing this as a company decision to save money (or have to save it), employees are criticized for having basic human needs.
Reducing working hours, on the other hand, is rarely considered. When models like the 4-day week are discussed, they are always linked to such significant drawbacks that they don't represent any real improvements. We would then either have to cram the workload of 5 days into 4 or forgo some money. This would mean either pushing ourselves even harder on fewer days, which certainly can't be compensated for by an extra day off, or skipping a few meals that we simply can't afford.
All this for the good of "our economy." It's just odd that the health of the German economy only becomes noticeable to us when growth stagnates and we have to sacrifice wages and leisure time for the sake of our economic competitiveness. Not to mention that we have absolutely no decision-making power over "our economy." We can neither restructure it nor opt out of it. That we work for the wealth of our companies and the preservation of our states seems to be a given. It's time we stopped falling for the nationalist fairy tales that supposedly put us in the same boat as our bosses! Instead, we share the same interests as (indirectly) wage-dependent people all over the world. The competition that currently exists between us, forcing us all into the same hamster wheel in our nations constructed by the course of history, is not natural.
We must realize that it makes no fundamental difference whether politicians and employers genuinely want to improve our lives or merely pretend to. It's clear that we can't expect any improvements from this quarter, simply because states and corporations, as well as workers, are in constant competition. The much-vaunted "constraints of reality" seem to magically ensure that ever more of our time and energy must be converted into ever-increasing productivity.
Despite everything, the fight for shorter working hours is not in vain. We must remind ourselves what we are doing when we drag ourselves out of bed to go to work: we are paying with our finite lifespan for the "privilege" of being able to survive and continue working. Not to mention that work can also significantly hasten our death or at least exacerbate health problems. Accepting this anger is the first step towards no longer tolerating these conditions.
Instead of just getting upset on our own, we need to exchange ideas with everyone around us: our colleagues during coffee breaks, those we're standing in line with at the office, our classmates in the schoolyard, the other parents picking up their children from after-school care.
We must organize where our lives unfold. Instead of hoping for hollowed-out demands from state-affiliated unions, we must develop and implement our own ideas. With pressure from below, not hoped-for charity from above!
In Germany, the number of hours worked rose from 47.7 billion in 2004 to 54.7 billion in 2025. However, real wages are not increasing, as they have not yet recovered from the sharp 4% drop in 2022. As a result, we are currently receiving even less money for our work than we did before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources:
Statements about increased workload
Statement about real wages
https://ruhr.dieplattform.org/2026/05/03/lebenszeit-endlich-noch-flexibler-verkaufen/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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