Hours of Work Unlikely to Change

The decision this week by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to give employees the right to refuse "unreasonable" hours of work will not have major impact most Victorian workplaces.

While many awards do give employers the legal right to require employees to work overtime, no one takes that legal technicality seriously.  In the real world the length of the working week is already decided by workers.

Moreover, working hours are unlikely to go back to previous levels due to changes in the composition of work, work arrangements and the preference of workers.

Occupations with the longest working hours are often the occupations of choice in today's economy.  Farming, not surprisingly, dominates the list of occupations with the longest working week. [1]  While traditional dry land farming is in decline, new forms of farming are growing.  Other occupations with long hours of work include small business owners, mangers, real estate professionals, medical consultants, legal professionals, financial advisors, couriers and truck drivers and engineers.  Virtually all the fastest growing occupations in terms of employment are in the top 50 occupations in terms of hour worked.  Most of these occupations are made-up of the self-employed, independent contractors or equity holders.  While once in these occupations people may have little real choice but to work long hours, they enter in the full knowledge that this will be the case and that they will be rewarded for their effort.

Over the last decade there has also been a trend towards more intensive work-holiday patterns which workers are unlikely to abandon.  Miners, for example, which are high on the working hour's list, now characteristically work 12 hours shifts.  They adopted the longer work-day in exchange for longer weekends and holidays.  Teachers and university lectures also have increased their workload during school time in exchange for extended holidays.  The same trend can be found in engineering, IT, nursing and other high paying professions.  The hard work/ hard play preferences of generation-X indicate that these arrangements will only become more common.  Since the data on hours worked is based on surveys of people at work during a given week and does not factor in holiday time, it trends to overstate hours worked over the year for many occupations.

While many workers may want to work fewer hours but they will resist any attempt by employers to reduce paid over-time or the bonuses that come with long hours.  These monies have been built into budgets of many household and into many enterprise agreements.  Even the construction unions which led the "working hour's campaign" do not plan to push for a reduction in working hours in up-coming wage negotiations.  They plan to keep the six day working-week but push for extended weekends and more hours paid at overtime rates.  In short they want a 36 hour working week not to reduce the hours worked but to get paid on overtime rates.

Many Australian's are working longer hours, but they are doing so out of choice and in the pursuit of higher incomes.  The AIRC did the right thing by ensuring that workers have the power to change the trend if the wish, but in reality they already do.

1.  (See Herald-Sun, 24 July 2002).

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