Over a third of employees would like to change weekly working time

In April 2003, the three Finnish trade union confederations published a joint study on employees’ actual and preferred weekly working hours. It finds that 36% of employees would like to change their weekly working time, even when this would change their earnings accordingly. About 17% would like to work fewer hours and 19% more hours. According to the study, major problems related to working time are a large share of involuntary part-time work and regular working hours that exceed 40 hours per week.

As part of recent incomes policy settlements, the social partners in Finland have been actively involved in developing good working time practices (FI0205101N). A study published jointly in April 2003 by the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (Suomen Ammattiliittojen Keskusjärjestö, SAK), Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees (Toimihenkilökeskusjärjestö, STTK), and the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals (AKAVA) addresses working time issues by examining how actual weekly working hours differ from preferred working hours among different employee groups. The study is based on data from the Statistics Finland labour force survey for the second quarter of 2001, and was written by Erkki Laukkanen of SAK. It finds that 36% of employees would like to change their weekly working hours, even when this would change their earnings accordingly. About 17% would like to work fewer hours and 19% more hours.

Excessively long weekly hours create problems

The Working Hours Act of 1996 and the 1993 EU Directive (93/104/EC) on certain aspects of the organisation of working time lay down the basic regulations for working time in Finland. According to the Working Hours Act, regular working time is at most eight hours per day or 40 hours per week. In various sectors there is some flexibility in how the average of 40 hours per week can be calculated over a period of 52 weeks. The EU Directive stipulates a maximum working week of 48 hours (over a reference period), including overtime. Despite these regulations, the study by SAK, STTK and AKAVA shows that regular weekly working time exceeds 40 hours among 10% of employees and 48 hours among 5% of employees. To avoid problems related to excessively long weekly working hours, the trade union confederations stress the importance of more extensive monitoring of occupational safety aspects of the Working Hours Act. They also want a debate on whether penalties for breaching the working time regulations are sufficient to prevent the use of excessive working hours.

The study finds that over 50% of employees working over 40 hours a week would like to work fewer hours. As many as 85% of employees working 30-39 hours a week are satisfied with their regular weekly working time. About 30% of members of trade unions affiliated to AKAVA would like to work fewer hours, compared with 16% of members of trade unions belonging to SAK. The wish to work fewer hours is closely related to the level of education; the higher the education, the higher the regular weekly hours and the stronger the wish to reduce these hours.

According to the study, Finnish employees would like to reduce their weekly working time - on average - by only 0-0.2 hours, suggesting that the problem in the Finnish labour market is not the average level of working hours as such. What needs to be addressed is an organisation of working time that makes some groups of employees work excessive hours and others too few hours.

Involuntary part-time work needs to be tackled

According to the study, 83% of women and 93% of men had a full-time employment contract in 2001. Part-time contracts were held by 17% of women and 7% of men. Of these contracts, 6% and 2% respectively were temporary in their nature. According to Statistics Finland, about 35% of part-time workers would like to have a full-time job and as many as 60% of employees with temporary employment contracts would like to have an open-ended contract - markedly higher figures than the EU average.

The study finds that 63% of women and 61% of men in temporary part-time jobs would like to work more hours. For open-ended part-time jobs, the corresponding figures were 46% and 44% respectively. Women working in temporary part-time jobs would like to work nine hours more per week than at present. Men in these jobs would like to work 10 hours more. The regular working hours in these part-time jobs were 21.9 for women and 21.8 for men. Thus, women in temporary part-time jobs would prefer to work 30.9 hours per week and men 30.8 hours per week - clearly fewer hours than in full-time jobs, however. Women in open-ended part-time jobs would like to work 5.7 hours and men seven hours more per week, increasing their weekly working time to 26.2 and 25.9 hours respectively.

Reconciling work and family life is major challenge

If employees have children, their average regular working hours increase steadily with age until the age of 50 years, according to the study. For employees without children, working hours rise until the age of 40 and then start to decline. If the working time of employees with children could be arranged according to their wishes, they would work, on average, about two hours less per week. This figure is twice as high as for employees as a whole. Somewhat unexpectedly, these results suggest that, over their life cycle, employees with children work longer hours than those without children. One of the explanations that has been provided for this result is that, in order to support their children, parents need to dedicate more hours to the labour market.

On average, when employees with children are under 30 years of age, they work about 38 hours per week and at the age of 50 they work about 41 hours per week. The largest gap between the actual and preferred working time is in the 46-51 age group; employees with children in this group would like to work 2.8 hours less per week than they actually do. In the case of employees in the same age group without children this gap is smaller, at 1.8 hours per week.

Preferred working hours differ more among men and women with children. The gap between men and women is largest in the 26-30 age group, when families normally have small children. In this age group, if there are children in the household, women would like to work 5.1 hours less per week than men. This gap reduces over time and is about three hours at the statutory retirement age of 65. Among employees who do not have children, the gap between men’s and women’s preferred working hours is largest in the 31-35 age group, at 3.8 hours. At retirement age, this gap has fallen to two hours.

The above figures suggest that reconciling work and family life is not easy in Finland. Employees with children tend to work more than average, and in particular at the age when their children are small. The pressure to combine work and family life seems to be heavy on women, who would like to work markedly less hours than their male colleagues at the age when their children are small.

Commentary

The working time study carried out by SAK, STTK and AKAVA shows that finding a better match between employees’ working hours and their working time preferences is a major challenge on the Finnish labour market. The inability to organise working time according to the individual needs of employees may have serious consequences in the face of an ageing population and the need to maintain the working capacity of employees as long as possible. It is a waste if employees cannot work the hours they are ready to offer on the labour market, and it is a waste if parents of young children cannot provide the kind of care for their children that they would like to. The social partners have a crucial role in these issues and it is hoped for that, together with the new government, new initiatives will be taken to improve the present situation. In this respect, the new government’s programme (FI0304202F), which emphasises the need to reconcile family and working life, is promising. (Reija Lilja, Labour Institute for Economic Research)