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A comment on Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds. Parent comment

Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by creshal on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @10:30AM (#12734702)
> And you can still do that in Europe, no one is stopping you from working more.

Well, unions do. But that's a good thing, it prevents a race to burnout.

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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by ajmurmann on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @10:39AM (#12734810)
Does that actually apply to every field? I've only worked briefly as a software developer in Germany and not full time, but I never got the impression that unions would realistically stop anyone in that field from working till midnight. If you are working as a factory worker for example that's of course a totally different story. However, I doubt that people in that kind of job regularly decide to put in a few extra hours on some days and are usually on the clock.
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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by matt4077 on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @11:08AM (#12735168)
If you're in management (defined as having authority to hire/fire IIRC) you're exempt from the law, same if you're self-employed.

For a regular programming job, I believe the the law applies (no more than 10h/day and (8h/weekday average over 6 months). Practically, it only matters if somebody cares about it which only happens systematically on larger companies with a union presence.

But: you're responsible for your employees and they can not waive this right. If you regularly tolerate it, you may run the risk of someone changing his mind after a few years and getting you into trouble, trouble being up to 15000 Euro in penalties and (theoretically) a year in prison if someone was harmed.

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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by joncrocks on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @12:51PM (#12736336)
In the UK you can opt-out of the EU working time directive.
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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by Symbiote on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @11:45AM (#12735576)
It's the EU Working Time directive.

You can work longer for yourself, but not for someone else.

http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=706&langId=en&intP...

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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by wott on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @07:22AM (#12742801)
But is not applied for everyone. In my country, it doesn't apply to engineers typically: the only limit is 13h/day, 6days/week, so that's a "limit" of 78h/week...
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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by dragandj on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @01:14PM (#12736610)
In most developed EU countries, especially the happy Denmark, mr. Taxman will make sure that you see little marginal benefit of those longer hours.
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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by exBarrelSpoiler on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @05:22PM (#12738847)
Well, for those who love work so much, they'd do so regardless of the extra monetary benefits, would they not?
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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by creshal on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @10:54AM (#12734975)
The overtime regulations vary from union to union, but generally there's an upper limit – you can work 50 hours a week (and get compensated in some form), but not 90.
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Re:Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds by _of on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @11:08AM (#12735169)
You can have two jobs if you want to. They won't stop you from that.
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