"Oversupply in the labor markets leads to wage erosion," says an open letter from the alliance to party leaders, union executives and churches.
The signatories understand their project shortening working time in europe explicitly also as a german task. "In addition to the officially just over three million unemployed, we have over three million part-time workers who work an average of 14.7 hours a week and for whom that is not enough," said co-initiator and business law expert heinz.Josef bontrup of the "tageszeitung" (taz/monday).
In addition to academics such as economist rudolf hickel and sociologist oskar negt, the head of the left-wing party, katja kipping, and left-wing economic expert sahra wagenknecht were among the more than 100 people who signed the letter. "What is needed is a fair distribution of work through a collective reduction in working hours," the letter states. "We need a project for society as a whole to shorten working hours, it can no longer be a task for collective bargaining," said bontrup.
At the end of the 1970s in germany, the union for metal, engineering and electronics (IG metall) and the union for printing and paper (IG druck und papier) were the pacemakers for the reduction of working hours with the goal of a 35-student week. In 2003, a new attempt by IG metall to introduce the 35-hour week in eastern germany failed.