EU employees working more hours

Employees in Ireland had one of the shortest working weeks in the European Union last year, according to a Eurofound survey published today.

The study shows that Irish employees worked on average 38.1 hours per week in 2010, compared to an EU average of 39.7 hours.

The survey indicates that the actual working week for most EU employees was longer than the average normal collectively agreed 38 hours in almost all EU Member States last year. This effectively reverses the trend of a narrowing gap between actual and collectively agreed working hours which has been seen since 2006.

The normal collectively agreed working time across the European Union is 38 hours.

Employees in 12 Member States worked more than the EU average, led by Romania with 41.3 hours a week, Luxembourg with 40.8 hours, and Britain, Poland, Germany and Bulgaria, all with 40.5 hours.

Employees in Finland had the shortest working weeks with an average of 37.8 hours, followed by France with 38 and then Ireland with 38.1.

In both the EU27 and the EU15, the actual working week was 0.2 hours longer than in 2009, the figures show.

In Latvia, Malta and Spain, actual working hours decreased in 2010 by between 0.1 and 0.6 hours while in 17 other countries including Ireland only modest increases were recorded.

No change in working hours were recorded in Austria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia and the UK last year.

"Collective bargaining remains an important role in determining the duration of working time in most of the countries, though to a lesser or sometimes negligible extent in some of the new Member States that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007,' said Juan Menéndez-Valdés, Eurofound's director.

Actual weekly hours worked by male full-time employees last year continued to exceed those of their female counterparts in all countries considered. Across the EU27, men worked on average 2.1 hours more than women, the survey shows.

Within this, men’s actual weekly hours exceeded women’s by three hours or more in Estonia, Greece and Sweden, and by less than one hour in Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Portugal.

Average collectively agreed paid annual leave entitlement stood at 25.4 days across the EU in 2010, being higher among countries in the EU15, where it was 25.6 days than in the 12 new Member States, where it was 24.1 days.

In Ireland, the average collectively agreed paid annual leave was slightly below the EU average with 24 days and much lower than the average 30 days leave recorded in Denmark and Germany.

However, while worse than most EU15 members it was considerably higher than Cyprus and Estonia which both had collectively agreed paid annual leave of just 20 days.