German football fans watching a 2006 FIFA World Cup match in a department store in Berlin. (Agencies) |
Germans should be allowed to watch the football World Cup on television at work without getting into trouble with their superiors, the head of the national employers' association said Thursday. Dieter Hundt, often called the "boss of the bosses", called on companies to cut their staff a little slack when footballmania strikes over the next month. "I am confident that employers, while considering the needs of their businesses, will react flexibly and, together with their workforces, develop their own policies," he told the daily Berliner Zeitung. Every company needs to decide for itself "to what extent it can strike a balance with the broadcast of World Cup games and working hours". Hundt's counterpart at the German Federation of Trade Unions, Michael Sommer, welcomed the employers' pledge of tolerance when asked by the Berliner Zeitung. Watching soccer together encourages "team cohesion and staff motivation," he argued. He noted that several of the World Cup matches in South Africa were taking place in the early afternoon, including the second match featuring the German side, against Serbia on June 18. (Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Web site.) (Agencies) |
德國雇主協(xié)會主席于本周四稱,德國公司應允許員工們在上班時觀看世界杯賽電視轉播,老板們應對此表示寬容。 素有“老板的老板”之稱的德國雇主協(xié)會主席迪特?亨特呼吁各公司在未來一個月的世界杯期間對員工們放松點要求。 他在接受《柏林日報》采訪時說:“我相信各公司在考慮企業(yè)需要的同時,會靈活應變,并和全體員工一起制定出對策?!?/p> “但如何平衡看球和工作時間的問題”,還是由各公司自行決定。 德國工會聯(lián)盟主席邁克?松梅爾在接受《柏林日報》采訪時也對各公司世界杯期間將實行的寬松政策表示歡迎。 他表示,一起看足球賽能增強“團隊凝聚力和激發(fā)員工的積極性”。 他指出,南非世界杯的幾場球賽都是在午后進行,包括6月18日德國對陣塞爾維亞的第二場比賽。 相關閱讀 (中國日報網(wǎng)英語點津 陳丹妮 編輯蔡姍姍) |
Vocabulary: cut sb. a little/some slack: 放某人一馬,饒了某人,對某人寬容一點。(It's your first day here, so I'm going to cut you some slack this time. Next time, you need to do much better. 看在這是你的第一天,我就不嚴格要求了,下次你可得干好點兒。) |