Gerhard Bosch Working time and working time policy in Germany 1 ...

Table 4: Usual working hours of men and women by number of children
in East- and West-Germany
All employees
Men without children
39,7
Women without children
32,4
Men 1 child
40,7
Women 1 child
25,9
Men 2 children
41,6
Women 2 children
21,6
Men 3+ children
41,8
Women 3+ children
21,4
Source: Kümmerling et. al 2008
5 Operating hours
Germany West East E-W-
Difference
35,3 35,6 36,9
39,6 39,0
32,8 34,4
40,7 40,5
27,6 33,6
41,5 40,4
23,0 31,4
41,6 39,7
22,2 29,2
+ 1,3
One form of increasing productivity is a better use of capital stock by increasing operating
hours. One possibility is to increase operating hours by extending working hours. Such a
coupling of working and operating hours limits the possibility of a better use of the capital
stock. The decoupling of working and operating hours by new shift systems or staggered
- 0,6
+1,6
-0,2
+6,0
-1,1
+8,4
working hours offers new ellbowroom for the extension of operating hours. In their
comparison of working and operating hours in European and Japanese automobile plants
Bosch and Lehndorff were able to show that in plants with shorter working hours operating
hours were longer than in companies with longer working hours. They also showed that in
plants with long working hours operating hours often were inflexible and rigid (Bosch 1995,
Lehndorff 1995).
There are also empirically studies on the impact of working time reductions in Germany in the
1980s and 1990s on operating hours (Figure 10). While agreed working hours were reduced
and usual working hours remained stable operating hours were increased. Average operating
hours increased between 1990 and 2003 by 4,3 hours per week. This decoupling of working
and operating hours was linked with an increase of flexible working schedules.
-1,9
7,0
16