As rise of Chinese e-commerce platforms adds to pressure, having Sundays off remains protected under Germany’s Basic Law

  • Buffalox
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    1 day ago

    Germany’s drive to compete with Chinese imports is colliding with its long-standing tradition of Sunday rest

    Isn’t having Sundays off protected by law in all of EU?
    Saturday too for that matter, except of course it doesn’t have to be those 2 days, but we generally have 2 days off per week, and working Sundays pays extra.

    This seems like a very ignorant understanding of working conditions by a Chinese person.
    EU will not make conditions worse, more likely China will improve conditions for workers, so the insane work weeks of 60 hours will become outside the norm in China just as in most of the rest of the world.
    There are already movement among Chinese people to strive for a better work/life balance.

    The article however does have a point that shops not being allowed to open on Sundays seems a bit antiquated. The headline however and the start of the article is way way off. Opening shops on Sundays will not increase German international competitiveness significantly.

    • gian @lemmy.grys.it
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      18 hours ago

      Isn’t having Sundays off protected by law in all of EU?

      I think it does not cite specifically Sunday but that you need to have a day off a week

      Saturday too for that matter, except of course it doesn’t have to be those 2 days, but we generally have 2 days off per week, and working Sundays pays extra.

      Or you make up for the working Saturday on some other day.
      For example in Italy shops are closed half a day on Monday (groceries shops open only in the morning while other open only in the afternoon) exactly because they work on Saturday. Some kind of shops still close on Monday to balance the Saturday opening (barber shops for example).

      And yes, normally here Saturday is paid 50% more and Sunday 100% more. Sometimes you can choose to have the day not paid but to earn an extra day of PTO to use when you want. I know more than few persons that work on Sundays to have some more days for the holidays (even though there are a limit imposed by law to the number of Sundays you can work in a year)