In Germany, there is criminal liability if your subordinates (if you are making their schedules, or would be the one to tell them to go home) work over an average of 8h/workday (only those in the contract count, if none specified, courts said to assume 5 work days), or a top of 10h/shift. Except for a very few select industries, you also need at least iirc 11h off between two shifts, but there are some ways/loopholes around this one.
Any overage over the 8h average has to be evened out within usually 3 months, unless something else is in the contract (and as with German law, if the contract is evil, i.e. "sittenwiedrig", it, or at least the relevant portions, is/are void).
This does mean that you might not get another job if you speak up, as always, but it does mean that if you are willing to change industries, your superior faces criminal charges.
Combined with the neglegible risk of not being able to feed your family, due to the vast social support net, you are actually able to stand by your principles, if you do care.
An EU directive states that no worker can be compelled to work more than 48 hours per week. Workers are allowed to opt out of this limit, but that opt out must be truly voluntary.
It is possible that German law may be stricter than EU law.
The UK implementation exempts roles where you actually control your own working hours, e.g. a parish priest is an employee (of the church) but there is nobody setting their working hours, likewise an MP works for their constituents, and is paid by Parliament itself, but neither gets to choose what hours the MP works so they're exempt.
Another clever trick is that 48 hours is averaged. Where the nature of the work makes daily leisure time pointless the 48 hours are averaged over an entire year, so maybe an oil worker puts in 10 hours per day for 2 weeks out on the ocean... and then they go home for two entire weeks before their next session. On average that's still under 48 hours per week
The boss can pay them, but he better trusts his subordinate doesn't get pissed off, or else he still lands in front of court.
It's a health policy, similar to how public buildings, even those that only invite the public, have to meet certain fire resistance norms. I don't know why those also apply to private shacks in the middle of nowhere, but I assume they do....
Overtime would be coming in Saturday.
Well, in the UK there's a waiver you can sign that lets you work more than 48 hours a week. It's more beneficial to the employer imo, but people who want a lot of overtime can actually get it. I just wonder if it's stricter in Germany - i.e. you can work 40hrs/week and that's absolutely it.
According to the law the week is Monday through Saturday, 6*8=48...
We often tend to forget that we fought hard for the five day week.
So while it's common for qualified jobs to have a 40h/WK contract, high workload opens the door to extend the week to 6 days, "Saturday work".
Again for qualified jobs you better compensate your people well for that...
For the floating average of 8h per day the rules then reference your usual regular work week. So if you are on a 5 day contract (like most people these days), that's where the 40h week comes from. For those amongst us who regularly do 6 days, 48h is perfectly legal in Germany. And temporarily those numbers go up to 50/60h weeks. The floating mean has to go down to 40/48 though. Iirc within a 6 month period, which is not law but usual (court) reading of the law.
It'r rather strict. The 10h/day limit can only really be breached if there is something on fire (well, a network counts too), which has a great immediate risk to the company, or if human life is acutely at risk.
This does mean that you might not get another job if you speak up, as always, but it does mean that if you are willing to change industries, your superior faces criminal charges.
Combined with the neglegible risk of not being able to feed your family, due to the vast social support net, you are actually able to stand by your principles, if you do care.