Usagevpn.com – As collective bargaining negotiations in Germany’s metalworking and electrical sectors prepare to open in October 2026, one of the country’s most prominent family-run industrialists has laid out a proposal that is likely to ignite fierce debate across the labour market: extend the standard weekly working hours to 40, with no corresponding increase in wages. Nikolas Stihl, grandson of the company’s 1926 founder and now at the helm of STIHL, the Waiblingen-based manufacturer that has topped global chainsaw sales charts since 1971, framed the demand not as a cost-cutting exercise but as an existential necessity for German industry.

The timing is pointed. With union-employer talks imminent in sectors that employ millions, Stihl’s intervention lands at a moment when German manufacturing is already under sustained pressure. He pointed to a roughly 15 percent contraction in industrial output over the preceding eight years and cited monthly losses of approximately 15,000 factory…