The eight-hour working day has been a fundamental pillar of labour rights in Germany for more than a century. Now, the coalition government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz is preparing to dismantle it. A draft law expected in June 2026 would remove the daily cap on working hours and replace it with a weekly maximum of 48 hours, a move that has sparked fierce opposition from the country's biggest trade unions.
Germany's Working Hours Act, the Arbeitszeitgesetz, currently limits employees to eight hours of work per day. That limit can be stretched to ten hours on individual days, provided the average across a six-month period does not exceed eight. The proposed reform would do away with this daily ceiling altogether, replacing it with a weekly cap of 48 hours, the maximum already allowed under the EU Working Time Directive (2003/88/EC).
Labour Minister Bärbel Bas of the SPD has confirmed that a formal draft bill will be tabled in June 2026, fulfilling a commitment laid out in the 2025 coalition agreement between CDU/CSU and SPD. The government describes the change as a flexibility measure, arguing that it would allow workers to put in longer hours on some days and take more time off on others, ultimately improving work-life balance.
To guard against abuse, mandatory electronic time recording would be introduced alongside the new rules.
Germany's trade unions are far from convinced. Anja Piel, a member of the DGB's federal executive board, told the Funke Media Group newspapers that excessively long working days are proven to cause illness, a burden that falls not just on employees but also on the wider economy and the healthcare system. Any loosening of the current rules, she argued, would disproportionately affect workers while offering little in return.
The existing law, in her view, exists precisely to prevent people from being treated like machines. The Food, Beverages and Catering Union (NGG) struck a similar tone. Its chairman, Guido Zeitler, warned that weakening the eight-hour day would amount to a regression to conditions that nobody should want to revisit.
He pointed to occupational health research consistently linking excessive working hours to serious illness, and said the Working Hours Act has always functioned as a safeguard against employer overreach. In the current debate, Zeitler argued, the physical and mental limits of workers appear to have been forgotten entirely, with employers seeking the freedom to deploy their staff however and whenever they see fit.
Once the draft bill is formally presented, it will go through committee deliberations, potential amendments, and votes in both the Bundestag and Bundesrat. With unions mobilising against the reform and employers pushing for greater scheduling freedom, the legislative process is expected to be contentious. Whether the government can strike a balance between modernisation and worker protection remains to be seen.
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