Europeans have shorter workweek than people in US, Japan, Australia - UN

One fifth of the labour force in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United States works at least 50 hours a week, compared with less than one-tenth of workers in most European countries, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) says in a new report.

"There are groups of workers with 'excessively' long hours who would prefer to work less, and at the same time, there is a sizeable group of workers whose hours of work are significantly shorter than they would prefer," says the ILO's Jon Messenger, edited the new publication on workers' workweek preferences.

Finding a good balance between business requirements and workers' needs will require policies promoting health and safety, helping workers improve the way they meet family responsibilities, encouraging gender equality, increasing productivity and helping workers' to choose and influence the length of their work week, according to Mr. Messenger's Working Time and Workers' Preferences in Industrialized Countries: Finding the Balance.

In Japan, 28.1 per cent of the workforce clocked in for more than 50 hours weekly, as did 21.3 of New Zealand's employees. In the 1990s, workers putting in more than 50 hours per week in the United States and Australia increased to 20 per cent from 15 per cent, the report says.

By contrast, in the European Union (EU), the ratio of the labour force working more than 50 hours ranged from 1.4 per cent in the Netherlands to 6.2 per cent in Greece and Ireland.

In the United Kingdom, 15.5 per cent of people worked more than 50 hours a week.

Part-time employees working 20 hours week or less would prefer to work longer hours, the book says.

"Half of all US workers would prefer shorter hours, while 17 per cent would prefer longer hours," ILO says in a summary. "In the EU, 46 per cent of those working fewer than 20 hours would prefer to work more and 81 per cent of those with at least 50 hours of work per week would reduce the number of hours worked, if they could."