28 percent of employees currently want to work fewer hours than agreed in their contract. In the case of full-time workers, that’s almost every third person (32 percent), as reported by the Upper Austrian Chamber of Labor (AK OÖ) on Wednesday.
4,500 employees were surveyed. It should be noted that the actual hours worked are often higher than the agreed amount. “In practice, many employees have to work overtime, namely almost three-quarters of all employees in Austria – 22 percent of them often and 52 percent occasionally,” says the Labor Chamber. Employees in public administration, transport and communications, and construction workers in particular work a lot of overtime. Health and social care, on the other hand, is the sector with the lowest weekly working hours due to part-time work.
Incidentally, according to the AK, one in three part-time workers wants to increase their weekly working hours. These need to be addressed specifically, said Andreas Stangl, president of AK Upper Austria. He points out that in some sectors it is desirable to save on overtime premiums.
Hours of work affect happiness
Christoph Hofinger of the Sora Institute emphasized that working hours influence job satisfaction and the willingness to change jobs. Stangl recalled that there had been no reduction of working hours for the general public since 1985. According to Hofinger, some employees would also give up part of their wages to better combine family and work or to reduce work-related health problems.
This desire is not a matter of age. “Contrary to popular belief, the desire to work less, even at the same hourly wage, is no more pronounced among young Generation Z than among all other age groups. The lamentations of politicians and business about the supposedly lazy young generation are pointless,” Stangl said on Wednesday. Older workers would also like to work less today – 3.4 hours less than 20 years ago.
All in all, there is a need for a modern working time organization that is geared to the needs of employees and for expansion of the legal entitlements to changed working hours. The changes decided in 2018 – a maximum permitted working time of twelve hours per day or 60 hours per week – must be withdrawn again.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
