Free Republic

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.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germans are leaving their country in record numbers but unlike previous waves of migrants who fled 19th century poverty or 1930s Nazi terror, these modern day refugees are trying to escape a new scourge -- unemployment. Flocking to places as far away as the United States, Canada and Australia as well as Norway, the Netherlands and Austria more than 150,000 Germans packed their bags and left in 2004 -- the greatest exodus in any single year since the late 1940s. High unemployment that lingers at levels of more than 20 percent in some parts of Germany and...