Found this comment on TikTok in response to somebody in the US having two jobs
“In my country you cannot legally work more than 40 hours a week.”
That seems wrong. I know certain countries do have laws saying you can’t work more than a 40 hours a week at a single job without consent and overtime pay, but a country that literally says even if you have two jobs they better both be 20 hours each maximum?
I live in Luxembourg, and this rule applies. Broadly speaking, the typical maximum is 40 but certain overtime approvals can push the max to 48 (occasionally, not on a regular basis). There are waivers to the maximum for specific sectors where working time is task-based and cannot be easily constrained to a predictable schedule (e.g. agriculture).
And yes, this maximum holds even across two or more jobs.
Citation from Luxembourg state website (in French, one of the official languages):
Partial translation:
The “respect certain rules” bit doesn’t mean this is acceptable as long as you submit paperwork or otherwise tick some routine boxes; it refers to procedures to report the situation to the ministry of work for review and approval. If they refuse, if they consider the work situation excessive and unacceptable, you have to reduce your hours to the standard.
Additional citations in English, reinforcing the official policy above and providing supplementary practical information as to its application:
The exception would be if the hours that put you over the limit come from your own independent business on the side, but it’s common here for employment contracts to have exclusivity clauses which prohibit your doing this.
Work conditions here are very strictly regulated. For example, it’s illegal to work on Sunday, unless you’re in a specific sector (e.g. tourism) and your employer is recognized and certified for exceptional work. Shortly after I got here, I was sternly warned by my manager for having spent time on a Sunday completing some overflow reporting tasks and sending emails about it. She said, obviously we can’t stop you if you want to do this, but do not call our attention to the fact that you’re doing it.
It’s not all pro-worker socialist paradise, either. For example, when an employee leaves his or her job, the notice period is prescribed by law, depending on length of service. I’ve been in my current position five and a half years, so if I resign, my notice period is 90 days, full stop. In the event the employer chooses not to continue your service over the notice period because you’re in a sensitive position, they can tell you to leave immediately, but they have to pay you the 90 days (or whatever) and you can’t start your new job until that period is complete (this is called “garden leave” because the cliché is that you go home and sit in the garden and drink coffee while reading the newspaper and collecting a paycheck). That might sound lovely, but it means, as a worker, you can’t quit an unpleasant job for a new gig and head for the door; the old employer will get their weeks and months out of you in the transition.
Hope this is useful.
In Germany the limits are a bit less strict than in Luxembourg - 8 hours per working day but this assumes a Monday-Saturday working week that has been a thing of history for most since the 1970s, i.e. the legal limit is 48 hours/week. Legal limit per day is 8 hours averaged over 6 months/averaged over 1 month for night shift workers/10 hours non-averaged i.e. on a given day unless a work emergency (e.g. spoilage of work products) can be proven. Minimum rest period between end and start of work is 10 hours. Additional limits/mandatory rest periods apply e.g. for truck drivers.
All limits apply across all employers (logically because the object is to ensure health and safety of employees and the public); if you have contracts exceeding the legal limits in total, the contract signed latest is legally invalid. Contracts usually have clauses mandating approval of other employment or at least notifying the employer.
Employers responsible for legal working hours totalled over all employers being exceeded face a fine/a possible prison sentence in grave cases. Because of this my employer’s HR is always breathing down supervisors’ necks about working times compliance, to keep the company owner out of jail. The 10 hour/day hard limit is hardest to enforce to engineers on an urgent project.
(Added due to edit time limit:) the minimum notice period mentioned by Cervaise applies in Germany too; in my case (time with employer > 20 years) it is 7 months, for both parties.
Question for both @Mops and @Cervaise - if I work 50 hours (either every week or in one particular week ) who has violated the law - me or one of my employers ? Because that’s the thing that’s difficult to understand from the US point of view - in the US , labor laws typically regulate the employer. As a general rule, if I’m entitled to overtime pay and don’t get it, I have done nothing wrong. If I don’t take the breaks I am entitled to in some states, I have done nothing wrong. My employer has , either by not paying me the overtime rate or by not enforcing the requirement for me to take a break. It seems kind of unfair if I can cause my employer (s) to be fined or jailed just because I don’t tell them about how many hours I work at my other job - but if it’s me who gets fined or jailed, that’s another story.
Is there a religious exemption for people whose sabbath is not on Sunday?
@doreen It’s complicated, and I’m not a labor lawyer. But as I understand my country’s system, if you have a single salaried position and your employer compels you to exceed the maximum (or does not actively take steps to curtail your hours if you did it unilaterally), it’s the employer at fault; but if you the worker take two or more different jobs that may or will cause you to exceed the maximum and you don’t report this to the state for evaluation, you the worker are at fault (on top of being on the hook for any violation of your employment contract(s) which likely demand exclusivity).
Not that I’m aware. It’s hard-coded in the law* that Sunday is a day of rest.
Luxembourg is progressive and forward-looking in many ways (totally free public transit everywhere in the country, one of five countries to legalize physician-assisted voluntary euthanasia for terminal patients, an active effort to fully legalize personal recreational use of marijuana, etc.), but there are signs everywhere that we are still, underneath those policies, a fairly traditional and conservative nation with deep roots in Christianity, specifically Catholicism. The majority of our public holidays are Christian holy days (Ascension, All Saints, Whit Monday, etc.). No other religions are recognized in the holiday schedule; the non-Christian days off are strictly secular (e.g. Europe Day, celebrating the European Union).
Beyond strict religion, conservative practices still abound. For example, under Luxembourg’s household tax laws, the primary earner with the higher wage is taxed at one rate, and the secondary earner with the smaller income, if there is one, is taxed at a different, lower rate. My wife’s salary exceeds mine, and she is therefore the primary earner. However, when we first got our tax cards from the state finance ministry, we saw that I had been designated the primary earner, which meant the withholding on our monthly paychecks would be wrong and we’d be hit with a bigger bill at the end of the year. After several weeks wrestling with the bureaucracy, we learned that a public servant had noticed our file and assumed that someone had incorrectly swapped our roles, and “helpfully” switched us “back.” This was fixed and our paychecks were adjusted. Then, the following year when we got our new tax cards, we found it had been “fixed” back to the incorrect arrangement. Not a huge deal, but irritating.
In any case, the point is, no, there’s no exception for non-Christians. The work week is what it is, and it’s unlikely to change soon.
*And in the culture. I’ve heard stories of busybody neighbors calling authorities if you are outside in your own yard on a Sunday performing substantial and highly visible physical labor, even just for yourself, like building a shed or something. It’s never happened to me or anyone I know personally, so I can’t confirm. But the rumors persist.
Germany: Only the employers (all of them) are in criminal violation. The criminal penalties in the Working Time Act (German language text) only reference the employer. Employers have the duty to inform themselves about other employment of their employee, for working time compliance reasons; they also have an interest to know about other employment because of conflict of interest issues. There’s hardly any employee in Germany who is not in a position of some trust.
Employees have a contractual duty to their employer to inform them about other employment; a lot of contracts (full time contracts almost always) have a requirement to have the employer positively approve other jobs.
At least the second and any further employers cannot be ignorant of the first job’s existence, because the employee’s income tax withholding in their payroll has tax class VI (withholding at max. marginal income tax). So at least for those there is no excuse.
I as an employee could probably concoct an elaborate scheme for working for two employers with none of them aware of that (a double life stressful for me to keep up, and not very realistic because scheduling issues at least would probably come to their notice). I would be in civil violation of both work contracts, and at least in criminal violation of tax law. The employers, if acting in good faith ignorant of the facts, probably would be in the clear.
How, if at all, does the law apply to students? Do hours in class count towards the maximum, or are you allowed to take a full-time job while also being a full-time student?
Germany: That seems to be mainly to be a health/pension insurance issue, not a working time issue. University students can be employed without withholding statutory health and pension insurance premiums (attractive to the employer because they have to match the employee’s premiums), but only if the student does not exceed 20 hours/week at work for more that 26 weeks/year. Students not exceeding that limit have health insurance without premium via their parents until age 25/health insurance at a cheap special rate from age 26. An employer of students needs to monitor the employee’s total working time in order to make sure they comply with social insurance regulations, but classroom time does not count as working time under working time regulations - it is more like a strenuous hobby, which the employer also does not need to keep track of. Most classroom time in German universities is not mandatory-attendance anyway.
Same for Germany (Cervaise references Luxembourg): Sunday is hard-coded into the law (which nowadays serves not to protect Sunday service, but to ensure the whole country is a market economy but not a market society). Jews and Seventh Day Adventists would have few problems as Saturday is not a working day except in retail, hospitality etc.; Muslims (that attend Friday prayer - a minority with German Muslims) would need to seek an accomodation with their employer; easy for most jobs because you go off work in early Friday afternoon anyway.
How about things like self-employment, especially things where you are producing whatever (writing a novel, painting, knitting baby booties, growing herbs in the backyard), hoping some day you’ll be able to sell the whatever? Maybe it counts as just a ‘hobby’ until you actually cash in?
Everything written so far about Luxemburg and Germany is correct as far as I understand it, but I must mention that none of this concerns free-lancers and self-employed workers, for instance writers, translators, independent lawyers, bar or restaurant or any other company owners (obviously it concerns their staff). And politicians, they may work as long as they wish too.
I should also clarify that those laws are in place not to prevent you, the employee, from earnig a decent living, but to prevent exploitation by the employer or serial employers. As a corollary, that also means that if you are only allowed to work X hours per week the hourly salary taken X times should be at least enough to live.
But nobody is going to stop you from exploiting yourself or from performing senseless tasks that generate no income and take much too long.
Unless the want to work six days a week, for whatever reason, but not work on their sabbath.
Your cites refer to “salaried positions.”
In the U.S., “salaried positions” are those of managers, in distinction to “hourly positions” referring to employees.
Hourly positions are the ones subject to rules such as mandatory overtime after 40 hours. Salaried positions do not get any extra pay for working more than 40 hours. They can - and are expected to - work more than 40 hours a week.
Does Luxumbourg have this distinction between managers and employees? Are managers also subject to the 40-hour limitation? If so, how does that work? Do they have to track hours in a way most managers in the U.S. do not?
Another difference is that employees can join unions, while their managers cannot. Does that separation also exist where you live?
The Working Time Directive applies across the European Union. The limit is 48 hours a week on average (averaged over a period of months). It also stipulates minimum rest periods (e.g. at least 11 consecutive hours in each 24 hours and at least 24 consecutive hours in each 7 days).
It is the duty of the employer to monitor the employee’s working hours and ensure they are compliant. In the event of a breach, it is the employer, not the employee, who is liable to penalties.
There is no legal distinction between managers and employees. Managers are employees. Of course they can be members of unions. It’s a basic right of freedom of association.
^^^ What he said.
There is minimal correlation between the base assumptions of US labor law and the framework in Luxembourg (and, I gather, in Europe generally, though I have no direct personal experience of it). It’s apples and oranges.
I am sometimes asked by colleagues and acquaintances about the work experience in the US. They are intrigued by the possibility of joining some globally prominent company, of which we have relatively fewer in Europe; they’re idly pondering a potential move, and they ask me what it’s like.
Their interest usually wanes when I get into the nitty-gritty, telling them sick time is limited at most companies (here, in a practical sense, you get as many sick days as your doctors are willing to sign off on), you’re frequently expected to be responsive to emails and messages even after work hours (this is unheard-of here), lunch culture is almost nonexistent (there are consistent arrangements for getting out of the office with colleagues probably three days out of five to socialize), the typical starting vacation allotment is ten days (I currently get 31), and on and on.
Life here is not perfect. There are annoyances and irritations. But I have zero interest in going back to the States.
Oh, and regarding the union question: Labor practices here are overseen by the Tripartite, essentially an official working group made up of representatives from business owners (employers), labor leaders, and state officials. To oversimplify a bit, the members of this body negotiate how agreed legislation will be interpreted and implemented, and they develop proposals for new legislation and amendments.
More here:
So in a very real sense, even if you’re not explicitly a member of a union, you still have indirect union representation, because the actions of the Tripartite affect all employees.
Can you think of anything even vaguely equivalent at any significant level in the States?
It’s acknowledged that this creates a drag on certain forms of innovation because the business community is constrained on experimenting with their workforce. Labor is always at the table so companies are discouraged from, for example, throwing huge numbers of people at some initiative, with the risk of laying them off a year or two later if the project fails. But this is viewed as a tradeoff, favoring stability over the boom-and-bust mindset. In other words, Luxembourg will never attempt to build the Metaverse, but also Luxembourg will never have thousands of people suddenly unemployed when the Metaverse turns out to be a fiasco.
It really is a different world.
What if you are a researcher in, say, an academic position. You are paid a fixed salary, you have a lab in which you carry out your research and, really, nobody knows how many hours you spend there. Of course any lab assistants you hire will be subject to the laws, but what about the principle investigator?
In my case, as a mathematician, I did my work at home and only my wife had any idea how many hours I “worked” (I use scare quotes because it mostly didn’t even fell like work). Sometimes, even she didn’t because a significant amount of it was lying in bed not sleeping.
Good question.
A lot of people are workaholics, in and out of academia. I cannot believe any government can stop this.
Personally, I’m retired. But for 41 years I was a software developer for the U.S. government. I didn’t work 70 hours a week, as supposedly occurs in private industry, but when I liked what I was doing and/or thought it was important, no one was going to stop me from putting in uncompensated hours.
When a supervisor, it was my job not to suffer subordinates to work excess hours without compensation. I took that seriously, but a few subordinates were like me and could not be stopped.
I guess the practicality of stopping workaholism depends on the nature of the work.