Cabrita, Jorge

On 31 March 2019, clocks across the EU will go forward one hour, a Union-wide event since 2002. However, the European Commission has proposed abolishing the bi-annual hour change, an idea favoured by the vast majority of respondents in a public consultation. This article discusses reactions by governments and national social partner organisations to the proposal, based on contributions from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents.

The results of recent research on working time patterns in the EU constitute a strong plea for working time policies that clearly acknowledge the life course perspective. This means that working time must not only be thought and organised in daily, weekly, monthly and/or yearly terms but also take into full consideration the different stages of our lives.

This article explores the views of workers about the issue of extending working life. It highlights differences in the share of workers regarding the age they would like to work to and the ability to work until 60 in terms of employment status, sex and country.

Working time is a recurrent topic of study because the nature of work, its content, the conditions under which it is performed and the labour market itself keep changing. This report provides an overview of the recent evolution of working time duration and organisation in the EU and highlights the most important trends and differences between Member States.

The sixth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) builds on the lessons learned from the previous five surveys to paint a wide-ranging picture of Europe at work across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups. EU employment policy priorities aim to boost employment levels, prolong working life, increase the participation of women, develop productivity and innovation and adapt to the digital challenge.

EU Member States have been passing laws to regulate opening hours for shops and businesses on Sundays. However, there are also Member States where new legislation is restricting opening hours. According to the European Working Conditions Survey, the proportion of workers reporting working Sundays increased between 2010 and 2015, supporting the idea that Sunday trading is becoming increasingly common.

​Nowadays we all know that long or excessive working hours may have serious negative impacts on a person’s health and wellbeing. Eurofound‘s new report 'Working time developments in the 21st century' suggests that if working time standards are mainly left to legislation or to be set unilaterally by employers, people will still tend to work longer hours. On the contrary, if the working time standards are negotiated through collective bargaining, the likely negative impact is less as people tend to work fewer hours on average.

This report examines the main trends and milestones characterising the evolution of the most important aspects of collectively agreed working time in the European Union during the first decade of the 21st century. Drawing primarily on information collected by Eurofound across all EU Member States and Norway, it focuses in particular on five sectors: chemicals, metalworking, banking, retail and public administration.

The Maternity Leave Directive (92/85/EEC) is concerned with improvements in the safety and health at work of women who are pregnant, have recently given birth or who are breastfeeding. This report finds that nearly all Member States comply with the directive’s provision of granting at least two weeks’ mandatory maternity leave before and/or after childbirth; a majority exceed this requirement.

This article presents some of the most notable developments and research findings on skills, lifelong learning and employability in the EU during the second quarter of 2014. The European area of skills and qualifications, EU skill shortages, streamlining further education and reducing labour market friction are the main focus of the report.