

S-Shearwave Imaging™,which provides information about tissue stiffness as a result of disease using ultrasonic transverse elasticity. ShadowHDR™, designed to suppress shadows and enhance the clarity of displayed grayscale images. The V8 is equipped with many premium technologies such as: In France, in addition to trimming work time, the possibility exists of signing "collective performance" agreements to organise schedules with the aim of saving jobs, but at the cost of salary cuts.Īnd in Austria, the Social Democrats have proposed a plan to reduce working time by 20 percent with a parallel reduction of five percent in net pay, according to the public channel ORF.Samsung is continuously seeking out new ways to help professionals obtain reliable answers with greater image clarity, enhanced accuracy and improved work efficiency. Merkel's government ultimately wants to leave it to companies' unions and management to decide the issue.īut if unemployment does not fall quickly, the debate on shorter working hours could become a major issue in next year's federal election campaign.Īnd the debate isn't confined to Germany.

In the beleaguered car industry's current climate, the four-day week would be "neither appropriate nor economically viable", Daimler personnel chief Wilfried Porth said. Several large German companies, such as engineering firm Bosch and carmaker Daimler, have already implemented schemes to reduce working hours, while discussions continue at tyre maker Continental and aerospace giant Airbus.īut in these cases employees have had to make major financial sacrifices.īack in the 1990s, when Volkswagen introduced a four-day week for some employees to save 30,000 jobs that were at risk when the group was in crisis, those affected had to accept a 10 percent salary cut. "The longer the crisis lasts, the more we must find intelligent solutions that do more than just distribute wages and subsidies," Carsten Linnemann, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, told business magazine Wirtschaftswoche.

Switching to a shorter week will only worsen "the enormous productivity shock" being suffered at the moment, according to Steffen Kampeter, director of the employers' federation BDA. Germany's far-left Die Linke party wants to go even further, urging a reduction of working hours to 30 a week without a loss of pay.īut employers appear reluctant to jump on board. Its latest proposal is supported by 60 percent of Germans, according to a YouGov poll published on Wednesday. In 2018, the union won the right for employees to opt to work only 28 hours a week for two years, with only a limited decrease in pay. This isn't IG Metall's first battle on working hours, and its achievements have often set the benchmark for employees in other industries. Hofmann, whose union represents more than two million workers, also said that for those switching to a shorter week, salary cuts should be kept in check so as not to cause a fall in purchasing power. Such a move could be the answer to the structural changes hitting sectors such as the car industry, which faces a "digital acceleration due to the pandemic", the IG Metall boss told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung at the weekend. The basic idea is that in working less, employees share more of the jobs that are fading away. "Reduced hours with some wage compensation may be an appropriate measure," he said this week. German Labour Minister Hubertus Heil, a member of the centre-left Social Democrats, has signalled he is open to moving away from a traditional five-day working week. Before the pandemic pummelled the global economy, Germany boasted a record low unemployment level of around five percent.īy July, the rate had climbed to 6.4 percent.
