With the Green Paper "Arbeiten 4.0 - Arbeit weiter denken" (Work 4.0 - Thinking Work Ahead), the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS) has provided impetus for a discussion process on the future design of work. Against the backdrop of technological innovations as well as demographic and cultural changes, which are accompanied by new demands on the organization of work, ways of designing an innovative working time policy are to be discussed.
To mark the occasion, the BMAS commissioned the Berlin Governance Platform to hold two trialogue events to which social partners, representatives of civil society and academia were invited. The results of the two trialogue events were incorporated into the White Paper on Working 4.0, which was published in fall 2016.
The results of the working time dialog that have found their way into the White Paper on Working 4.0. include the following broadly supported findings and proposals:
1. a change in the corporate and management culture is necessary for innovative working time organization.
2. there is a need for research on the health burdens of knowledge work and on the multiple burdens of work and family.
3. there is a need for a social dialogue on and promotion of models for individual working time over the course of a person's life, for example in the form of a long-term employment account that takes better account of time requirements over the course of a person's life.
4. the return from part-time to full-time work should be legally secured.
5. there is great potential in the establishment of experimental spaces on rest periods and maximum daily working hours, flanked, if possible, by existing tripartite platforms in their implementation.
2016
Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS)
Prof. Dr. Gesine Schwan
