German Engineering Strike Puts Shorter Week On Agenda - But Could Have Won More

Socialist Party industrial organiser

- Glenn Kelly

With one in four of all full-time workers working over 40 hours a week in Britain, the notion of a proper work-life balance, to be able to spend more time with family, care for children or look after relatives, is but an empty slogan for millions.

At the same time, millions of part-time workers desperately scrabble around week to week to find enough hours to make ends meet.

Increasingly the legal right to ask for flexible working is becoming just that: a right to ask, and the right of the boss to tell you to get lost! In particular, many women are forced out of work after having a child, unable able to afford childcare and unable to get agreement from the employer to reduce their hours.

The truth is that the current UK law on flexible working rights has more holes in it than a sieve, and gives the employers an easy escape route.

That is why the recent deal agreed by the German engineering workers’ union IG Metall has attracted widespread international interest. Coming on the back of workers’ action its a glimpse of what could be won - not by pleading with the employers, or asking the EU, but by militant industrial action.

The union did not win all its demands, and all the details of the final deal are not fully clear. But it did win a 7.4% pay rise over two years.