Give us back our workers: How cutting time-off rights will reduce working hours
London: June 6th 2005 - Research carried out by the Federation of European Employers (FedEE) has revealed that the average employee in every EU country works well in excess of their basic contractual hours and that the main reason for this is to cover for colleagues who are taking time off. In countries such as Belgium, France and the Netherlands, more than 20% of employees are absent from work at any given time, whilst in Sweden, work absence amounts to 29.9%. This means that other staff have to work additional time to complete the tasks of their missing co-workers.
Social benefits such as paid annual leave and sickness absence, maternity and parental leave, and part-time working all reduce the staff numbers available for work in any typical week. The governments of many EU member states have further enhanced these entitlements and created additional rights such as paternity leave, sabbaticals and leave to care for dependants. Legally enforceable collective agreements have also gone beyond basic statutory rights to introduce even more opportunities to take time off, and double holiday pay received by workers in some countries makes it more financially rewarding to be on annual leave than at work.
Although additional time-off rights might be seen as an opportunity to generate extra jobs, the fragmented nature of absence due to such factors as sickness, emergency childcare or attendance at ante-natal clinics has meant that the cover required varies from day to day. No jobholder can be expected to have the skills to work in the accounts department on a Wednesday, meet a technical sales representative on a Thursday and then end the week acting as secretary to the production director.
The research has also dispelled a long-standing myth that the UK, with the most liberal working time regulations, has longer working hours than any other EU country. At 44.8 hours a week, average working hours for full-time employees in the UK are similar to those in Austria (44.7 hours) and less than the Netherlands (45.5 hours). This may be explained by the fact that employees are absent from work for only 15.5% of the time in the UK, whilst this figure rises to 23% of the time in the Netherlands.
To view the detailed figures for weekly working hours and time spent at work, please visit http://www.fedee.com/workinghours.shtml
Commenting on the findings, the Secretary-General of the Federation of European Employers, Robin Chater, said that "rather than seeking to prevent those who wish to work longer hours from improving their income levels, the focus of EU policy makers should be on removing the causes of work absence that are the main reason for obligatory additional working time.
"Our research clearly indicates that it is well meaning policy makers who have created the long working hours culture, not greedy employers seeking to avoid an increase in employee headcounts. Now it is up to the EU and individual governments to wake up to the fact that staff time-off entitlements are the real working time issue and not the questions of standby time or opt-outs from the maximum 48-hour week."
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