New Law Buys W. Germany Shop Owners Time, Trouble

West Germany is embroiled in controversy over a new law to permit stores to stay open Thursdays until 9 p.m.--2 1/2 hours beyond the regular closing time.

Labor unions and others charge that it threatens family stability.

Boycotts have been called against a number of retailers who have indicated that they may go along with the Ladenschlussgesetz --the “store-closing law.”

The Economics Ministry says the whole thing--the new law as well as the old law--is “completely insane.”

Earlier Saturday Closing

While the revision will allow retailers to stay open later on Thursdays starting Oct. 1, it mandates that those that do must close by 1 p.m. on Saturdays, an hour earlier than usual.

On other days, stores are required by law to close by 6:30 p.m., and shopping is outlawed on Sunday.

The intent of the new law is to help relieve consumer congestion on Saturdays, when the vast majority of working adults rush to get their week’s shopping done before the mandated 2 p.m. closing time.

Parking garages are always jammed, and parking spaces on the street are hard to find. People scramble to find shopping carts, and long lines form at cash registers.

That would seem to make Thursday night shopping a welcome idea, but hardly so.

Walter Deuss, chairman of the Karstadt department store chain, the nation’s largest, said the company had lost $5 million in sales this year because of strikes over the change.

Employees for Karstadt and other major retailers are insisting on new labor contracts that guarantee them a 6:30 p.m. closing time.

A recent survey of the 370,000 retail business owners, conducted by the National Retailers Assn., indicated that less than 20% of consumers planned to shop on Thursday nights.

Losses Feared

That has left store owners concerned that the cost of keeping clerks later on Thursday will not be met by a corresponding rise in sales.

Conservative lawmakers favored the Thursday night shopping idea because it keeps West Germans in step with neighboring countries that have been lengthening shopping hours.

Leftist politicians opposed it on grounds that it would be “anti-women and anti-children.”

During the acrimonious battle to change the law, retail workers’ unions and political groups launched advertising campaigns showing children left home alone while their parents wantonly shopped or their mothers slaved at a cash register at night.

But the Thursday night law will not make it any easier to figure out when to shop:

* Bread stores are closed on Mondays because they open for two hours on Sunday, when everything else is closed.

* Pharmacies are closed Wednesday afternoons because they stay open round the clock one weekend each month for emergencies.

* All shops are allowed to close between 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. for lunch--the same time many workers are at lunch and could pick up a few things.

* Then there is Long Saturday--the first Saturday of the month when some shops, though not all, stay open until 6 p.m. But Long Saturday will be shortened by two hours after October as part of the government compromise to compensate for Thursday nights.

“The whole thing is completely insane,” said Economics Ministry spokesman Peter Vogel. “The old system, the new system, everything.”