Last week, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder irked members of just about every political party with his proposal to scrap the country's Reunification Day holiday in order help fill the massive hole in the federal budget. The equation works something like this: If Germans work an extra day each year gross domestic product will increase by 0.1 percent -- which would in turn bring €2 billion ($2.6 billion) into the government's tax coffers. Too bad for the chancellor that the plan sparked a national argument, with critics calling it everything from "stupid" to "outrageous." Schroeder backed away from the plan over the weekend, but the opposition has used it as an opportunity to argue for a general increase in the number of hours Germans work each week -- a change they say would do far more to help plug the leaky budget.

"What kind of state must a country be in if it calls national and religious symbols into question just for a few million euros," the left-of-center Sueddeutsche Zeitung asks. Germans should work more, the editorial argues, but not for the reasons the government is asking them. "Yes, it makes sense to work more, but not in order to fill a few gaps in the budget, but rather to reduce labor costs without forcing employees to make too many sacrifices."

The financial daily Handelsblatt is even blunter in its criticism. "Both debates ignore what employers and workers are already doing in practice and divert attention from the issue at hand -- rising state debt." The paper notes that workers at companies ranging from Siemens to Volkswagen are already making huge concessions to cut labor costs and save their jobs. The paper wonders where politicians get the "chutzpah" to preach about working times, wages and competition. Instead, it recommends politicians spend a little more time getting their budgets back in order and cutting subsidies -- "a task they have continually shirked."

Other holidays have now replaced Reunification Day on the chopping block. Still, there are better solutions than cancelling days off, argues the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Why should we haggle over (the) May 1 (holiday) or the Pentecost," asks the paper? "Increasing the working week to 40 hours (from the current 38) would be equal to eliminating 11 holidays," it notes. "Nowhere else in the world is the number of non-working days as high as in Germany -- add to that the relatively short working week." Instead of bickering about public holidays, the editorial says, the government should not shy away from a conflict with the unions. If it did, "the economy would benefit first, then the labor market and finally politics."

The Financial Times Deutschland disagrees, saying a longer work week would just undermine workers. "There is no disputing that Germans need to work more hours in their working lives than they have done," the editors write. But increasing the number of working hours will do little to solve Germany's massive unemployment problem -- especially in the face of major reforms that will reduce benefits to the long-term jobless. "With a work week that is 10 percent longer, companies could produce 10 percent more without hiring any new workers. The economy would then have to grow an additional 10 percent before the overtime would bring a pay check and bread on the table for a single jobless person," it concludes.

Other editorials on Monday examine the Ivory Coast, where a bad situation has made a turn for the worst. Last week, the government of President Laurent Gbagbo abandoned an 18-month cease fire and began attacking rebels in the northern part of the country. France, once colonial master of Ivory Coast, has 4,000 peacekeeping troops in the country trying to maintain the cease-fire, and nine of those soldiers have been killed since fighting broke out on Thursday. Gbagbo's foot soldiers have also begun attacking the 8,000 French civilians living in the country.

The Sueddeutsche notes that without France, Gbagbo wouldn't be in power today. But that doesn't keep him from being a "massive problem" for the hand that feeds him. "The mood has already heated up to the point that there won't be any normalcy for the French in the Ivory Coast in the foreseeable future," the paper writes, even if the civil war and attacks against French institutions, companies and facilities quickly stop. "Gbagbo controls tens of thousands of followers capable of violence who would hunt down French civilians." And if France violently tries to push through its political, economic and military interests in the country, the former colonial power would really become an "occupier." But it's a Catch-22 situation. "It would be even worse if France withdrew because then war would not only be inflamed between Gbagbo and the rebels -- it would also lead to a collapse in the country's economy." The reason: before the civil war, Ivory Coast had one of the healthiest economies in Western Africa -- largely because its business landscape is dominated by French companies.