Germany's Working Hours Act caps the standard workday at eight hours, extendable to ten with compensatory rest. The conservative CDU/CSU and employer associations want to scrap the daily cap in favor of the EU's 48-hour weekly maximum, arguing it would unlock scheduling flexibility for businesses and workers alike. The SPD accepted this in the coalition agreement, reluctantly, and has been fighting a rearguard action on the terms ever since. The employer case is straightforward: seasonal industries, project-based work, and continuous-process facilities like refineries already operate outside the eight-hour norm through existing exceptions. Rainer Dulger of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations frames the current law as an anachronism — "the era of fax machines and rotary-dial phones" — and points to the rest of Europe already operating under the weekly framework. Chancellor Friedrich Merz discovered during a refinery visit in Leuna that 12-hour shifts were already legal there, with workers reportedly preferring the resulting three-day weeks. The SPD's counter is not anti-flexibility but anti-unilateral. The initial reform draft from Labor Minister Bärbel Bas required collective bargaining agreements before any schedule changes, electronic tracking of hours, and health and safety guardrails. The CDU/CSU and business groups rejected this immediately. Dulger called it "steeped in mistrust." The German Confederation of Skilled Crafts labeled it a breach of the coalition agreement. The reform has been frozen since June 2026. The SPD then escalated. A seven-page paper signed by its labor, youth, women's, and seniors' wings demands that working hours be set "jointly and by mutual agreement" between employers and employees — not determined unilaterally by management. The title, "Self-determination, Not Deregulation," frames the fight explicitly: this is about who holds the scheduling pen, not how many hours are written on the page. The trade union Verdi adds the health dimension: extended shifts correlate with higher injury rates and disproportionately burden workers with caregiving responsibilities, who are overwhelmingly women. The 12-hour shift model that Merz celebrated works in continuous-process environments with strong works councils; it does not automatically translate to hospitality, retail, or gig-adjacent work where power asymmetries are sharper. What makes this politically combustible is that both sides can claim the coalition agreement supports their position. The CDU reads "maximum weekly rather than daily working time" as deregulation. The SPD reads "better work-life balance" as requiring worker consent mechanisms. The text is ambiguous enough to sustain both readings, which means the real negotiation is happening now, not when the agreement was signed. The outcome will set a template for labor relations across German industry for a generation. If the CDU version prevails — weekly caps without collective bargaining requirements — employers in low-union-density sectors gain unilateral scheduling power. If the SPD version holds, flexibility becomes bilateral but slower to implement. The likeliest result is a compromise that satisfies neither side, lands somewhere in between, and gets tested immediately in sectors where works councils are weak or absent.
