The coalition of the far-Right Freedom Party and the conservative People’s Party (OVP) of Austria, which will form the next government, is planning to increase the daily maximum working hours from eight to 12, a long-pending demand from corporations. With such steps, “bureaucracy should be reduced” and “working rules should fit more into practice”, said Sebastian Kurz of the OVP, the incoming Chancellor. “The state must not be in the way of the corporations,” he added. “Austria has slipped in many areas from the top of the field to the midfield,” said Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of the Freedom Party, while praising the new plan.
Many observers had expected the new coalition government to be pro-business. However, the move is not popular with many working-class Austrians. “While several other European countries want to decrease weekly working hours from 40 to 30, Austria wants to increase them. That’s simply absurd,” said Farhad Omar, 32, who works with a consulting firm in Vienna.
“Since I have a very flexible job at a good and progressive firm, I’m happy that the new rules will not affect me. But I believe many employees from the lower working class will be hit badly. That’s exploitation,” he said.
Ironically, many working-class people had voted for the Freedom Party, which is one of the reasons why the outgoing Chancellor Christian Kern and his Social Democrats lost the recent election. According to politicians around Mr. Strache and Mr. Kurz, the aim of the reform is not to have a 60-hour week, but to “increase flexibility” of working hours.
More exploitation
“I believe this will lead to more exploitation. People who do not earn much will work more now,” said Armin Anfang, 25, a teacher from the city of Innsbruck. “Last but not least, this is the very outcome of a neoliberal economic system which is just built on competition. I’m not surprised that both parties — the Freedom Party and the Conservatives — represent such values. They have never really hidden what they are going to do,” he said.
Nevertheless, during the election campaign a few months ago, the Freedom Party presented itself as a “working-class party”. With the new policy, many working-class people who voted for the party are outraged now. “Dear Heinz-Christian, what is going on? Do you want to lose your voters? A policy against workers, that’s a weak performance,” one of the party’s supporters wrote on the Facebook page of Mr. Strache. Many others, who were in a similar mood, did the same by writing that they did not vote for him “to see that happen” or “to be enslaved”.
“Everybody with a clear mind can see who is being targeted by a 12-hour day or a 60-hours week. It’s mainly the working class. The current developments in Austria are totally crazy,” said Manuel Zwerger, a student from Innsbruck who lives in Denmark. “While Scandinavian countries like Sweden introduced the six-hour working day, Austria wants to exploit the people more and more.”
According to Walter Pfeil, Professor of Labour and Social Law at the University of Salzburg, the new step could have a massive impact on the income of employees. “Flexibility in working time used to be governed by collective agreements so that overtime can be linked to minimum wages. If this is left to the individual companies (as proposed by the coalition), the compensation option will be eliminated by a mandatory minimum wage,” Prof. Pfeil told Austrian daily Der Standard .
Emran Feroz is a freelance journalist based in Stuttgart, Germany
