Blame fierce globalization, greedy bosses, cowed workers or just the facts of life in free market economies -- but many Europeans are starting to accept they may have to work longer hours to safeguard their jobs.
Prompted by recent one-off labor agreements in Germany, public opinion shifts and a change of political gear in Paris, and Berlin, economists detect the winds of change and say the implications could be enormous for the future of the region.
The euro zone is facing dire demographic trends which are likely to see its working population, and hence its economic capacity and potential, decline over the coming decade unless either output per worker or its income growth accelerates fast.
YUSHA
Working harder -- with or without extra pay -- appears difficult to avoid.
"The cases we've seen are still isolated events but they look like bellwethers of the future," said Paul Swaim, economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Swaim was one author of the OECD's 2004 Employment Outlook, which starkly illustrated the divergence in working time between Europe and the US over 30 years.
Since 1970, OECD data shows work hours per head in Germany, France, Finland and Spain fell by about 15 percent while those in the US, Canada and New Zealand rose by 15 percent.
Last year, average annual hours worked by employees in Germany, France and the Netherlands all came in under 1,400. The equivalent number for US and Japanese workers was 1,777 and 1,828 and in Britain was about 1,650.
Add the fact that Germany has the second highest labor costs in the world and the economic strain becomes clear.
For generations, it was accepted that as societies became wealthier fewer working hours were needed and more leisure time was possible and desirable. But that consensus broke down in the 1980s.
Business-friendly governments and supply-side economics in the US and Britain pushed working hours higher again just as continental Europeans drove harder for a shorter workweek, either as a trade-off for wage restraint or as a way of prodding employers to create more jobs.
The former approach accelerated long-term growth at a price. The OECD ranks the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand as the four countries with the weakest employment protection laws of its 30 members.
Continental Europe went the other direction. German unions forced manufacturing firms to accept a 35-hour week with a wave of industrial unrest in 1984. In 2000, France followed suit when Lionel Jospin's government enforced the same for all employees.
Now, the elastic separating divergent trends between the big English-speaking economies and the euro zone may have snapped.
Last month, industrial giant Siemens, while threatening to move thousands of jobs to Hungary, agreed with unions and workers in two German mobile phone plants to increase the working week to 40 hours from 35 hours for no extra pay.
Workers at these plants and the IG Metall union agreed to an effective 12.5 percent cut in hourly wages to save their jobs.
Dozens of other German firms are reported to be seeking similar pacts. Carmaker DaimlerChrysler is negotiating longer hours with more pay for some staff and thousands of public sector workers are being required to work longer.
An opinion poll this month found 57 percent of Germans believed employers and unions should re-introduce the 40-hour week to reduce labor costs. Asked if they would work longer with no extra pay to secure jobs, 79 percent said "Yes." Even 63 percent of union members agreed.
Unease about the working week is not limited to Germany.
The French government has raised questions about the functioning of the 35-hour week as opinion polls show an appetite among workers for more flexibility at least.
French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is advocating more freedom for workers to choose how long they work. EU Trade Commissioner Mario Monti echoed that call this week.
With euro zone unemployment at 9 percent and job creation still miserable during the fastest world economic expansion in 16 years, something seems to have started to give. EU data shows the average workweek for full-time employees across the euro zone rose 0.1 hours to 41.1 last year.
"The euro area experiment of attempting to boost job growth via a lower workweek may be ending," said Juergen Michels, economist at Citigroup in London. "A more flexible approach to work duration -- including a lengthening of working hours on a case by case basis -- could become the norm in coming years."
Michels said the changes may not boost jobs in the short-run but may prevent them going abroad. More secure employment may have improve dire consumer confidence and reverse a steep build up in the German savings ratio.
More profitable firms will aid inward investment and growth, he added, and lower labor costs should keep interest rates low.
And while some see acceptance of longer hours damaging Europe's core social and economic model beyond repair, others say flexibility now is the only way to protect the bulk of it.
"Working more is the only way for Europeans to save what can still be saved of their social model -- good quality healthcare services and decent pensions for all," said Eric Chaney, economist at Morgan Stanley in Paris.
"It does not need a rocket scientist to see that, in order to fund pensions for a growing number of retirees and ever more costly medical services, Europe needs to grow income faster," he said.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs