We've shifted to the 10-hour work day and the 8-hour work day before, despite a worldwide economy with an increasing appetite for stuff, and despite employee protections being much, much weaker back then.

We've also gained mandatory arbitration and at-will employment; let's not get ahead of ourselves. Not to mention most knowledge-workers work more than 40 hours a week with no hope of overtime. Of course, at least in America, we won't see 'white collar' jobs shift from the 5 day work week, but they have shackles of a different kind.

Working hours have gotten longer in the US with the decreased power of unions.

We also have shifted from the 6 or 7 day workweek to 5.

The number of emails I get from Americans (across multiple jobs) on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon would argue differently.

Obviously, this is anecdotal but no company in the world is going to release any figures saying that their employees work longer hours than they are employed for.

That's why workers need to keep fighting for things they have achieved. Otherwise employers will take them back.

By that logic, manufacturing in Germany would have seized decades ago. The fact that it hasn't, and that other high-wage countries (USA, Scandinavia, etc.) are still flourishing, shows that such Economics 101 simply don't represent the real world.

We could point to German products which already sell for premium prices (say a Miele vacuum), they don't appear to have been killed by cheaper similar products from elsewhere.

Because Miele are known to outlast anything else. They don't only have the premium price, they actually offer premium quality, which can't be said of many premium brands.

> Unfortunately unless worldwide culture changes such that demand for produced goods drops dramatically in favor for intangibles (humanities, happiness, etc.) any small union that does this will basically become irrelevant in no short time. It's important to note that the union in the OP has huge leverage.

This is exactly the theory behind socialism. Capitalism is great at increasing our productivity, but past a certain point, you can't continue valuing productivity more than worker happiness. Socialism is less efficient than capitalism, even Marx admitted that, but at some point it begins to make sense to shift our values. When will that point be? Probably not yet, maybe not as soon as people think, but probably not never. If the metalworking industry is productive enough so that it makes sense to shift their values, then more power to them.

The problem with shifting to socialism completely is lack of incentives. Also central planning doesn't work. Voting with money by what you buy has shown to be a much better planner than any government could hope to achieve.

What we need to do is change the mindset of what is considered a normal workweek. The shift from 7 to 6 to 5 days and 14h days to 8h or 7h days was also a change in mindset more than a change in political system.

In a capitalist system you also need the mindset of most people to change at the same time. I mean a lot of things that we need for living that have a somewhat constant demand (rent/house prices, food, toilet paper, ..) will have the price at which profit is maximal. Which is why with the advent of women working you didn't have families with two incomes being able to afford twice as many houses, but families with one income not being able to compete with two income families to buy a house. The prices of necessities will always adapt to what people can afford.

If everyone switched to a 28h workweek at the same time, it wouldn't be a very big problem because all the other prices would adapt and you could afford the same basic lifestyle with a bit more basic luxuries. If you're the only one switching you can't afford a basic lifestyle anymore.

I work at a place that de facto has 35 hour working week, and unions was not in any way involved in making that happen.

> If you doubt this, consider a company who has (or can find) equally productive employees who will work 56 hours a week for the same wage. This company will produce twice as many trinkets.

If Unions are relevant, it means they control negotiations for their whole segment of the labor market. This is the case at least in Scandinavia, and I suspect it is in Germany too.

So for example: if the auto workers union say that the work week should be 35h and the minimum wage €2k/mo, that means you can't set up a car plant and build cars with workers paid less, or working more.

Actually you can. Companies in Germany don't have to be part of a union. My previous company was non-union, paid lower wages and had more overtime hours. Still they weren't profitable and they sold a few years ago to a competitor. My current company is unionized, and plenty of people still have non-union contracts (mostly lower management and up).

It's mostly big auto companies that are unionized. They know that a) They can't attract the talent they want with worse conditions than all their competitors, b) it makes it easier to negotiate, because you're not negotiating with every employee, only one union, c) it indirectly puts a cap on what they're paying engineers. Engineers wages would probably be much higher if the big companies weren't unionized. With the union, you get the same raises as anybody else, but on a higher salary level. d) They can just put you on a salary level that they deem appropriate and you don't have much way of rising up.

> Companies in Germany don't have to be part of a union.

That's the case in scandinavia too, but there it's "optional" (scare quotes intentional). In Sweden for example, if you open up a factory and refuse to have a union agreement with your workers, you'll find that your deliveries might not come, or your trash might not be picked up (for example), as unions (including OTHER unions entirely) will try to force the employer to make a union agreement. The law makes those kinds of actions legal.

In germany there are other examples such as unions having guaranteed seats in the boardrooms of companies, to ensure the same kind of balance.

I haven't heard of non-unionized companies being threatened in Germany, unions do work on their influence as soon as they're inside though.

Trinkets are made by robots that work 168 hours a week. More and more work is about creative endeavors. Can you have twice as many ideas sitting at a desk for 56 hours a week vs. 28 hours a week?