AUTO INDUSTRY REPORT: Porsche wants to increase worker hours

October 25, 2004

Automaker Porsche AG would like to get its employees to work longer hours for no additional pay, a German newspaper reported Sunday. The company wants to do away with a five-minute per-hour break, which company officials say adds up to 18 workdays a year, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily reported. Union leader Uwe Hueck called lengthening hours without increasing pay "immoral," according to the newspaper.

"I won't accept that people work for free. There will be very tough negotiations -- not for weaklings," Hueck said.

A contract between employees and management is expected to be renegotiated before it runs out next summer. Such a decision would be dependent on whether -- and where -- the company decides to manufacture a fourth model, the newspaper reported. Germans have increasingly faced longer hours as industry, under pressure from cheaper wages abroad and a sluggish economy at home, tries to cut soaring labor costs.

http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/...e_20041025.htm

 

That's sad.

 

It's sad that Porsche wants to do this or that the workers are resisting?

They get something like 7 weeks of vacation a year, great pay, these five minute breaks every hour, and there's simply too many workers at the plant given the levels of automation they have now.

The alternative is that German car makers will move more capacity elsewhere.

A lot of socialist Europe is suffering from the same problems... check out this on France...

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_...rt+panel+warns

So called 'free' government benefits and labor laws making hiring, retaining and firing workers hugely expensive have made this mess.

 

Also, I saw the Porsche story reporting as follows:

Porsche to Cut Jobs, Extend Hours

Porsche, the German maker of luxury sports cars, wants to extend working hours and cut jobs, its chairman said in a newspaper interview Wednesday at a time when other car makers in Germany are also drastically reducing their workforce in an attempt to drive down costs. "In our production facilities, those jobs that become free are not being replaced since we have been able to sharply increase output per worker," Porsche chairman Wendelin Wiedeking told the Financial Times Deutschland without providing any concrete figures. In August 2003, when Porsche held its last headcount, the car maker employed a workforce of just over 10,000. Porsche has embarked on a programme to boost productivity to help counter the negative effects of the weak dollar, Wiedeking said. "We're holding intensive talks with workers, for example about the infamous five-minute 'pee break'" that forms part of a wage agreement in Porsche's home state of Baden-Württemberg, Wiedeking said. The break, which gives workers five minutes every hour to go the toilet, "is a relic that needs to be looked at," the chairman said. Fellow car maker DaimlerChrysler recently succeeded in abolishing the break and extending working hours at the end of a recent fierce battle with employees. (AFP)

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/briefs/0,1574,1366678,00.html

Some interesting stuff about Germany on this web site.

 

Germany has some of the laziest workers in the world, it is becoming part of their culture.
Some of these guys are worse than even your typical unionized GM worker.