The German dilemma: work more or take an anti-heat siesta?
Germany is short of manpower and economists say people have to work harder. The doctors, however, think differently: it is necessary to introduce the nap in the hottest hours of the afternoon, they say. All the details in the article by Pierluigi Mennitti from Berlin
To cope with the labor shortage, the Germans must go back to work more, warns the president of the Institute for Economic Research Iw in Cologne. The times of the fat cows are over, the nightmare of the beginning of the 2000s of returning to being the sick man of Europe fills the newspaper reports, but on the day in which the president of the authoritative Rhine think tank launches an appeal to his compatriots to roll up your sleeves, the first most read article on the ARD public TV news site concerns the request of general practitioners to introduce into German labor law a sort of summer siesta, an afternoon nap to better tolerate the high temperatures of the hottest weeks .
More than the workaholic tirades of economists, the Germans seem more interested in the Mexican (or southern European) proposals of general practitioners. On the other hand, health first of all.
THE GERMAN DOCTORS' PROPOSAL: DO AS IN THE SOUTH
It must be said that doctors, in their proposal to employers, are not thinking of reducing working hours, but of remodulating them. “We should take a cue from the working practices of southern countries in hot weather,” said the president of the Federal Association of Physicians of the Public Health Service, Johannes Nießen, “get up early, work productively in the morning and take a siesta at lunch it is a concept that we should adopt in the summer months”.
The theme fascinates, even if on average the start of work activities in Germany – in summer as in winter – is already a little earlier than, for example, in southern Europe, and if anything it tends to end earlier, with the legendary Feierabend, the after-work period before returning home dedicated to a beer in a Kneipe that starts around five in the afternoon. But Nießen insists: “In the intense heat, people are not as efficient as usual. Insufficient sleep, in the absence of nocturnal refreshment, also leads to concentration problems. Complex work demands should therefore be postponed until the early morning hours.”
And he concludes with advice that appears superfluous below the Alps: "Furthermore, it is necessary to have a sufficient number of fans and lighter clothes, even if the dress code of the office does not allow it". And for those with home office privilege, "a cold foot bath under your desk is another way to cool off in the home office."
THE REQUEST OF THE TRADE UNIONS
Anja Piel, head of the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), Germany's largest trade union confederation, takes the lead and demands that employers introduce heat risk assessments as a standard in companies during the summer months to ensure workplace safety in the event of high temperatures. “Risk assessments are the basis for tailored protection,” Piel says, and not having them in place constitutes “a failure by employers that is totally unacceptable in light of climate change and extremely hot summers.” And he asks that offices with temperatures above 35 degrees be closed, unless the employer provides aids such as air showers.
Even Robert Feiger, president of the Industriegewerkschaft Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt (Ig Bau), the union of construction workers, a sector particularly sensitive to weather conditions, declares that "of course, we must above all protect workers who are forced to work outdoors in this sweltering heat."
ECONOMISTS INTERRUPT THE SIESTA: WE NEED TO WORK MORE
The doctors' proposal immediately found a favorable echo in the debate that ensued, although this year, at least for Germany, the discussion is a bit forced, since real heat waves have not yet occurred, all 'at most a couple of bets around 35 degrees immediately return. But in the summer period, even information experienced on the bank becomes news and the Italian heat wave occupies the front pages of German newspapers, bouncing off Mediterranean-style debates. Authoritative approval of the siesta comes from the Social Democratic Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach, for whom the idea "isn't bad at all", but the government will not intervene with its own proposal. “Employers and employees should negotiate for themselves,” Lauterbach said, “what is certain is that from a medical point of view such a measure makes sense for many professions.”
Economists take care of extinguishing the enthusiasm for siestas and naps, much more worried by the shortage of manpower than by the incursions of Charon. Michael Hüther, director of the Iw of Cologne, an economic institute not surprisingly close to the business world, is convinced that the measures taken by the government to speed up the entry of foreign workers and debureaucratize mechanisms for recognizing education completed abroad do not they will be effective in a short time, while the emergency is now. And he believes that the only viable solution is to ask the Germans to work harder.
Apart from the summer siestas, for a population that has entertained itself in recent years with ideas of four-day working weeks, it is a cold shower, which however does not help against the heat. For Hüther it is to the north and not to the south that one must look. “In Sweden, a full-time employee works almost 300 hours more a year,” he begins in an interview for the Tagesspiegel, just to set the record straight from the outset. And also in Switzerland. "We have to go back to work more", says the director of the IW, "what is needed is an expansion of individual annual working hours, rather than the unrealistic dream of a four-day week".
Hüther warns of "distortions in the economy" if the shortage of skilled workers is not addressed. “Already in 2023, there will be a shortage of 4.2 billion working hours”, he explains, “immigration alone will not solve the problem, especially since neighboring countries and in general all industrialized countries of the northern hemisphere suffer from the same shortage and therefore competition for foreign workers is very high”.
“We need to make better use of the potential of our workforce to make the transition to a climate-neutral economy with a then smaller population,” concluded Hüther, predicting that “without the extension of working hours, in growth rates of 0.5-0.75% at most would be possible in the coming years. And inflation would be 3-3.5% for years”. Numbers against numbers, figures of the economy against those of atmospheric thermometers. Waiting for politics to return from vacation.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/germania-lavoro-pennichella/ on Thu, 20 Jul 2023 05:30:32 +0000.