Post: #1

Germany's employment ministry has banned its managers from calling or emailing staff out of hours except in emergencies, under new guidelines intended to prevent employees from burning out.



The guidelines state that ministry staff should not be penalised for switching off their mobiles or failing to pick up messages out of hours.

The move follows similar restrictions on out-of-hours email imposed by German firms including Volkswagen, BMW and Puma.

VW stops forwarding emails to staff from its company servers half an hour after the end of the working day, while other firms have declared that workers are not expected to check email at weekends or in their free time.

The labour ministry's rules only allow contact if the task cannot be postponed until the next working day. Managers should apply a principle of "minimum intervention" into workers' free time and keep the number of people whose spare time is disrupted as low as possible.

More here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...istry.html

Post: #2

Haha the the German investment banks will find a way around this or they will go under.

Post: #3

German companies are notoriously cruel, especially to young workers. You simply can't get on your feet and have a decent standard of living until you're 30. A few more things they can do to have a humane work force:

- Pay workers "time and a half" for anything over 40 hours. Many German contracts range between 42-47 hours per week.
- Pay workers for traineeships when they do the same work as full-time employees.
- Pay workers humane wages for apprenticeships. A friend of mine works as an optometrist, and in the industry, you have a year of full-time work (40-50 hours) paid next to nothing, and can only get a modest raise by passing multiple exams. Then, a year later, you can ask for a REAL salary. The work you're performing is the same throughout.
- Limit the number of interns small companies can hire. At two young companies where I worked (founded around 2008) you see a 50/50 split between full time workers with actual salaries and unpaid interns doing the exact same work for 300-400€ a month. In Hamburg, a city where rent alone costs 500-700€. It's like outsourcing to India, except the company pays less and the workers don't have accents.
- Across the board minimum wage laws. Even the U.S. is better there.

The good side of German work laws is that if you're at a larger company (Bayer, BMW, etc.) it's next to impossible to get fired. They're only allowed to fire under two circumstances - you do something illegal that would break regular laws, or if the company runs out of money. In many cases you see people pushed into obscure roles for decades because the company can't fire them.

English companies seem much better in comparison so far. Higher wages, greater emphasis on work/life balance, higher overall investment in employees.

Post: #4

Strange, why do they report about this?
In companies paying the trade union salary, you have a good work/live balance.
35 hours a week with paid overtime or a time "account" to take it off later. You have 20% higher pay compared to companies not paying union wages. Apprenticeships have low wages, because you are going to "crafts"school half of the time and have zero experience. You can get government support, if you have to move out of your home to do the apprenticeship (usually, people are ~16 starting it).

Post: #5

(09-04-2013 12:58 AM)Blick Mang Wrote:  ...
The good side of German work laws is that if you're at a larger company (Bayer, BMW, etc.) it's next to impossible to get fired. They're only allowed to fire under two circumstances - you do something illegal that would break regular laws, or if the company runs out of money. In many cases you see people pushed into obscure roles for decades because the company can't fire them.

I think its fine to break people starting out in the company if they are your permanent problem once they are hired on full time. Its a big burden to bear if you pick a shitty employeee

Post: #6

(09-04-2013 08:07 AM)wiscanada Wrote:  

(09-04-2013 12:58 AM)Blick Mang Wrote:  ...
The good side of German work laws is that if you're at a larger company (Bayer, BMW, etc.) it's next to impossible to get fired. They're only allowed to fire under two circumstances - you do something illegal that would break regular laws, or if the company runs out of money. In many cases you see people pushed into obscure roles for decades because the company can't fire them.

I think its fine to break people starting out in the company if they are your permanent problem once they are hired on full time. Its a big burden to bear if you pick a shitty employeee

Agree that German laws give relatively good protection against ebing laid off from one day to another, even though by no means to the extent as insinuated by Blick Mang. If you do not perform up to expectations. you will be fired just as anywhere else...

However, I would also like to mention that this situation has some good effects for the companies as well. Once the economy picks up again, they still have all their experienced and skilled staff onboard whereas if you live in a "hire & fire" culture, companies will have to go through the process of finnding suitable and skilled staff again...

Post: #7

Of course you can get fired in Germany like in any different country in the world. Only if you work for the government its hard to get fired. And its not only German companies that hire a lot of interns for cheap labour. In the UK there is the same trend.

Post: #8

(09-04-2013 11:53 AM)w00t Wrote:  Of course you can get fired in Germany like in any different country in the world. Only if you work for the government its hard to get fired. And its not only German companies that hire a lot of interns for cheap labour. In the UK there is the same trend.

ah ok, its the same way in the US and Canada.