Niedersachsen to become the most efficient state in Germany

Municipal workers' unions in the German state of Lower Saxony and several other communities to boot are ready to walk out, crippling bureaucracies everywhere, reports the International Herald Tribune.

Surprisingly, rather than kowtow to the unions' righteous demands for a 38.5-hour work week (which, subtracting Mittagspause, Kaffeepause, and liberal holiday and vacation times, translates to an average of 3 hours a day spent at work for each worker), German higher-ups are holding fast.

Why?? Why aren't administrators paralyzed by fear that the unions will cripple German cities?

It seems that, unlike recent striking French workers who controlled public transit, the German municipal employees are by and large merely government bureaucrats and office employees.

I'd like to go down on record as predicting that private industry's productivity will double during the work stoppage.

Maybe, if Niedersachsen's lucky, government negotiators will offer to pay bureaucrats simply to stay home and . . . reorganize their sock drawers. Or whatever else flips their pedantic, detail-oriented wigs.
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