German union wins right to 28 hour working week and 4.3% pay rise
German workers won a key victory in their fight for a better work-life balance when a big employers group agreed to demands from the country’s largest trade union for the introduction of a 28 hour working week.
The agreement between IG Metall, which represents a wide swath of industrial workers, and the Südwestmetall employers federation, shows how unions in Germany, that for years have been a model of wage restraint, are flexing their muscles in ways more typical of organised labour in France, home of the 35-hour working week.
It also comes with Germany in the midst of its longest postwar stretch without a government and Angela Merkel struggling through her fifth month of coalition negotiations, raising questions about whether a country that once lectured Europe on...