Fewer Danish companies taking production downtime in July

Factories are no longer sending all employees home for a summer break at the same time

Fewer Danish manufactories are taking three weeks of production downtime during the month of July and continue as usual.

While in the past, the vast majority of Danish companies used to close the entire production down for three weeks during the summer and send employees home on factory holiday, this tradition has slowly been changing.

In 2000, the Danish industry produced 18 percent less than normal during the summer, but last year the drop was only 8.5 percent, according to figures from Statistics Denmark.

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Well automatised
“Danish companies are in an increasingly fierce competition with companies from other countries to sell their goods,” Morten Granzau Nielsen, the economic policy director at Dansk Industri, told DR.

“[But] the Danish manufactories are some of the most automatised. And when you have robots and machines, it is easy to handle production – for a short time – with fewer employees.”

According to the vacation act Ferieloven, the Danes have the right to hold three consecutive weeks of holiday in the period from May 1 to September 30.




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