Factories with Breathing Power - The Change in Working-Time Organisation in the Europaen Automotive Industry

The paper presents the findings of a survey on working-time organisation in the European automotive industry.It compares the duration of working time and operating hours and the organisation of shift systems, drawing oninformation from works councils or trade union branches in 39 bodywork and assembly plants in eleven countriesfor the reference year 1998. The survey carries on from an investigation on the same subject carried out bythe IAT at the beginning of the 1990s and draws attention to a number of important changes, namely the trendtowards weekend working and flexible shift systems. These trends are most marked in Germany, where theindividual working hours are the shortest of all European automobile workers.