Trade union: DGB Bavaria rejects longer working hours – Bavaria

The DGB Bavaria has clearly rejected calls for longer working lives. “Extending working hours will not produce a single skilled worker,” said chairman Bernhard Stiedl at a press conference in Munich on Thursday. As a sign against the “absurd proposals” from politics and business, the DGB Bavaria is therefore launching the online campaign “Redesigning working hours.”

In the coming months, issues such as occupational health and safety, unpaid overtime, care work and equality as well as “the contrast between the wishes of employees and reality” will be examined, it said.

A longer working life does not solve the current challenges, but leads “even more skilled workers to burnout clinics or straight to disability pensions,” explained Stiedl. Occupational health and safety are “not given much importance in far too many companies,” added the deputy chairwoman of the DGB Bavaria, Verena Di Pasquale, according to the statement. With regard to women in particular, “flexible and co-determined working hours” are a means of securing skilled workers. “According to the Federal Employment Agency, Bavaria’s greatest skilled worker potential lies with women,” said Di Pasquale. Nevertheless, working hours are still unequally distributed between the sexes.

According to the DGB Bavaria, in 2022, 49 percent of all women of working age in Bavaria worked part-time – for men, the proportion was nine percent. The situation is reversed for unpaid care work. This is why “modern working time models are needed that allow paid work and care work to be reconciled and distributed fairly,” said Di Pasquale. What the employees want must be decisive, explained her colleague Stiedl: “For us, it is clear: work must fit into life and not the other way around.” Tailor-made solutions in the interests of employees could include a reduction and flexibilization of working hours, as well as long-term accounts and part-time retirement arrangements.

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