Posted on 02/13/2006 4:15:56 PM PST by george76
German public sector workers fighting plans to extend their working hours have widened their strike action to cover most of the country.
An estimated 20,000 local and regional authority staff including nurses, cooks and cleaners have joined the largest public sector strike in 14 years.
They are protesting against plans to extend weekly working hours by 90 minutes, from 38.5 to 40 hours a week.
The industrial action...has now spread to 10 of Germany's 16 states...
Leaders at Verdi - Germany's biggest union with 2.4 million members - have warned that the strikes could last for up to six weeks.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Why not take this to it's logical conclusion? Strike until you get a five hour week.
German workers apparently have no grasp of why they're slipping economically, and why the Chinese will probably kick all of our butts.
This phrase is always amazing..."The industrial action..."
Actually, no industry and no action.
I'm surprised the unions waited this long to try to make trouble for Merkel. They will not accept reform.
[An estimated 20,000 local and regional authority staff including nurses, cooks and cleaners have joined the largest public sector strike in 14 years. They are protesting against plans to extend weekly working hours by 90 minutes, from 38.5 to 40 hours a week.]
Is this a joke?
This must be a satire piece.
The Germans are supposed to be a country filled with intelligent and hard working people.
Please tell me this is a joke.
We should call in President Reagen to deal with them...
lazy socialists. Wait till Merkel tells them they won't be getting 8 weeks of guaranteed vacation time off per year anymore either.
No, it is not scrabbleface.
West Germans have never really brought the "former" Communist from East Germany into the real world.
Very many lazy Communists who want a pay check, full benefits, major vacation time (a month, paid), full, free healthcare...
Germany is becoming a joke.
Plus, they have those "youths" to do jobs that the Germans do not want to do.
Nationalized healthcare means that your nurses *all* go out on strike at once. Ditto for doctors.
...hope you don't need healthcare during those strikes.
Wow.
They get eight weeks paid vacation ?
In a related story...
"Eager Poles find German jobs "
As soon as Genek Zelewski slams the doors of his lorry in Berlin, the race against the clock begins.
Every day, he picks up sacks of dirty washing in the German capital and drives it across the border to the Textil Fliegel laundry in Gryfino, northwestern Poland.
Within 24 hours, it has to be immaculate and back in the pristine dining rooms of Berlin's top hotels.
The company achieves its goal, through seamless logistics and an impressive, high-tech computer-controlled laundry.
But the real cutting edge is the dozens of Polish women, patiently folding towels and bathrobes and checking each piece of linen for the slightest imperfection.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4584616.stm
Yeah, but nothing like this could ever happen in the US. </sarc>
Popular workers' saying from the former Soviet Union: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."
i wish i had to work only 40 hrs. weekly!
40 hours at the first job,
then on to the second job.
Public sector has already lost heaps of jobs by outsourcing to private companies - I can't guess why these guys don't smell the powder burning and accept the quite minor changes to keep them on the cooperating site.
hehe that's not the way germans go to strike - certainly all necessary services are fullfilled by a core team tha's not on strike.
Maybe some doctors will have to order pizza instead of goin to the casino or our rubbish will be removed a day later.
I heard of some surgeons to be carried out delayed - but only the ones that are not time critical.
If you got private personal but they still are in a union you better pray they strike like germans.
"hehe that's not the way germans go to strike - certainly all necessary services are fullfilled by a core team tha's not on strike."
Yeah, that's pretty much the way a public sector strike works here in Germany: At a hospital all emergency rooms will be fully staffed, it's just that the nurses will wave some banners in front of the building and you probably won't get an appointment to get a mole removed during the strike.
By far the nastiest bit is that nobody's collecting the trash, but even there are exeptions, like, well, hospitals.
"They get eight weeks paid vacation ?"
No, that is incorrect. Law mandates 20 work days (4 weeks) of paid vacation per year, which is the same as in the UK and less than in Spain, France or Sweden. However, in many sectors 6 weeks of paid vacation are agreed upon by employers and unions. Except for maybe high school teachers noone gets 8 weeks.
Hey, its not 8 weeks...its 24 days of leave per year that each German earns. And they need it because they are so obcessive about what they do, or what they don't do.
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