Mercedes-Benz agrees four office days as the German standard from January 2027

Mercedes-Benz reached a new company-wide works agreement on 29 September 2026 that allows managers to require full-time staff on site up to four days a week without specific justification. Four days becomes the stated standard and one home day the default. The 2016 mobile-work agreement, which permitted up to five days remote, has been terminated. The new arrangement is slated to take effect on 1 January 2027.

It is not yet final: the individual site works councils still have to approve it. The central works council described the blanket four-day standard as a step backwards while saying it had headed off a worse outcome. The agreement runs alongside a push for roughly €800 million in German labour-cost reductions.

Why this matters

German works agreements carry weight beyond the company that signs them, because they get cited in negotiations elsewhere and because the works council structure means they are genuinely bargained rather than announced. A major German employer moving from “up to five days remote” to “four days on site by default” is a marker for how the German industrial sector is now reading the question.

For anyone job-hunting into German employers, the practical signal is that a 2016-era remote policy is no longer a reliable guide to what a company will offer in 2027. Ask what the current works agreement says, and when it was last renegotiated, rather than what the careers page claims.

Context

The announcement landed in the same week as a strike at Maersk in Antwerp over home working ending and a reported reduction to one telework day at Société Générale. Germany’s national home-working rate has been flat for some time, with the ifo Institute putting it at 24.9%.

What to watch

Site-level works council approval, which is where the four-day standard could still be modified, and whether other German manufacturers follow with equivalent agreements.