A-Infos (en) Germany, Ruhr, Die Platform: Finally, a more flexible way to sell lifespan? (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

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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