At the close of the fifth round of negotiations on 09 May in Potsdam and true to their reputation as innovative social partners, the chemical union IG BCE together with the employers’ organization Nordostchemie e.V. together signed a framework agreement on working time that the union has called ‘modern and a first’. The agreement introduces increased flexibility over working time that will benefit both businesses and employees and will transfer to company level several decisions hitherto taken at sector level. The model is based on two pillars that will authorize companies together with their respective WCs to set weekly working time by themselves within a range of 32-40 hours per week. Management and the WC can also decide to introduce ‘individual corridors’ allowing workers to adapt their own working time suiting their own personal needs, and of course within the set of defined rules. If disputes arise at company level then the sector framework agreement will apply.
A balanced agreement. Baptized by its authors, ‘the Potsdam model’ this working time framework agreement signed by IG BCE and the employers’ body Nordostchemie e.V. will only affect some 30,500 or so employees. However, according to the publication Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the agreement has sparked interest across the country. The agreement does indeed take exemplary account of both the interests of business and the needs of employees. “The new corridor set in our collective agreement pr
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