[cdavid]

Concerning the 35 hrs/week: it is the legal duration for work above which you are supposed to pay a higher hourly rate. It is NOT a maximum, and many people work more than 35 hrs/week (the figures for working hours are pretty similar between France, UK and Germany, with UK having the lower on average IIRC, but I cannot find the figure ATM).

[mhd]

There's some data on "Eurostat"[1]. It gets quite complicated, depending on whether you consider full-time, part-time employees, the self-employed, family workers, sick time, maternity leave etc.

But yes, it seems to hover around 40 hours for most countries. Strangely even for France, where this is bordering on the illegal... Found an old page where the Brits are complaining that they're working more than the average, don't know how they filtered the results to get to that conclusion. The Swiss do seem to live up to their industrious stereotype, though...

Never heard about a 35+ pay hike in Germany, though. Considering that there's no minimum hourly wage and most people are paid fixed salaries anyway, this wouldn't even get you very much. Sounds more like a result of collective bargaining than a federal law.

[1]: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_...