Perhaps related to my post yesterday about European vacations, I just read a post from Albanach in the comments of a Slashdot story on work hours that goes over Europe’s working time directive (previously unknown to me).
Indeed, in Europe if they had you working 15 hour days, you could go home at 11am on the Thursday and not return to work until the Monday.
Why? Because the European Union protected its workers by introducing the working time directive which emans the maximum hours you can be contracted to work is 48 per week — you can work longer if you wish and agree, but no employer can force you too, and if you decide not to there's not a thing they can do.
Damn! Remind me why I’m living in this country, again? ;)
Germans are pretty punctual about things–including when they leave work. My company over the summer had 35 hour work weeks so people would come in at like 8:30 and leave pretty promptly by 4 (we had half an hour lunches). One time I stayed “late” to do some work and left at 5:30; by this time, the entire building was deserted!
Don’t forget about the mandated 4-6 week vacations. :-) See http://www.utne.com/bPractSeekerPr.tmpl?command=search&db=dArticle.db&eqheadlinedata=4%20Weeks%20Vacation