News of the week - Strike in civil service

Germany is in a battle. Not in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Kongo. Germany is in a national battle. Since mid February, in parts of the country, civil servants are on a strike, resulting in piles of garbage in the streets of many German cities, major disturbances in public transportation, emergency-only-treatments in hospitals, closing of kindergarten, and other disturbances of public life.

The conflict is quite complicated, so I'll try to summarize the key issues, here.

Actually, there is not one conflict, but a number of related conflicts. It all started in October 2005, when a new collective labour agreement (CLA) was made for all civil servants in Germany. To understand the following, you have know that in Germany, as a civil servant, you can have one of the following employers:

-The central government
-The state government
-The municipal government

The whole thing basically centers around the amount of hours, civil servants have to work per week. The CLA says: 39 hours.
-The central goverment did not sign the collective labour agreement, this did not result in any strikes yet, though.
-The state goverments did not sign either AND are demanding a 40 hour working week for all civil servants (this is already the case in the former East German states).
-The municipal goverments in Hamburg, Niedersachsen and Baden-Würtemberg did sign the CLA, BUT in the former West German states, the municipalities want to use a right for amendment, to increase the working hours to 40 per week as well.
The labour union ver.di strongly opposes these demands as they fear that an increase of the weekly working hours could cause a loss of 250 thousand of a total of 3 million jobs in the civil service sector.

After weeks of strike, the municipal goverments in Hamburg, and Niedersachsen have reached agreements. In Hamburg, a complicated solutions was found, in which the average weekly working hours were set to 38.8, which can be more or less in individual cases, depending on the job, the age, and the family situation. A similar deal was reached in Niedersachsen, where the average weekly working hours was set to 39.24.
In Baden-Würtenberg no agreement is in sight yet, even after an attempt for arbitrage.
Also for the people employed by the state governments, an end to the conflict is not in sight yet.

The people in several German cities will have to put up with garbage piling up a bit longer. This will not improve the negatiation position of the labour union, as public support for the strikes is decreasing rapidly.



So, in short, the whole conflict is about the question whether civil servants should work 39 hours or 40 hours per week. Even though, I realise I oversimplified the situation with this summmary, the following question remains: if employers and employees cannot reach an agreement over one or two extra hours per week, how long will it take for the necessary big reforms to be realised?

I wonder what the Chinese perspective on this issue is.