Most people in Europe want to work between 20 and 40 hours a week, according to a report due from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions soon.
At present only 20 per cent of employees in the EU work 30 hours or less.
The basic working week averages 38.6 hours, where collective agreements with unions operate, but 60 per cent of employees covered by them also work overtime.
The EU foundation survey last year found that most workers in the EU would prefer to spend less time at work and more with their families.
Eighty per cent of Irish workers, asked then why they would prefer to work part-time, said they wanted more time for themselves and 47 per cent said they would like to spend it with their children.
Despite all the hype about Celtic tigers, both studies show that most of us regard work as a necessary evil rather than something we enjoy. On the positive side the 1999 report found that many women who did not work outside the home would like to go out to work if they could do so part-time.
The survey also found that 11 per cent of employees wanted to work longer hours, but even this group wanted a shorter basic week so as to reap bigger rewards from overtime pay or time off in lieu. A recent study by Trinity College Employment Research Centre showed similar attitudes among Irish workers.
The new report comes as many employers and unions, especially in the public service, are finding an increased demand for part-time working.
The report on the growing demand for a shorter working week will be the first produced by the Dublin-based foundation under its new director, Mr Raymond-Pierre Bodin.
The foundation has just celebrated its 25th anniversary and its remit has been expanded to planning for sustainable development in the workplace. The foundation had concentrated on monitoring changes.
"Basically we will be the think-tank of social Europe", Mr Bodin said. "Our core business is social Europe."
The new mandate will involve monitoring minimum standards in employment patterns, job status, working conditions and working time, but not wages.
Pay will remain a matter for the European Commission, EU member-states, unions and employers, all of which are represented on the foundation's board.
"The wage factor is a matter for direct negotiation," Mr Bodin said, although he accepted that EMU and closer economic integration could see the emergence of wider pay-bargaining models. The foundation's industrial relations observatory monitors such developments at EU level.
Mr Bodin wants the foundation to raise its profile and become more "user-friendly". He is planning an international conference on the future development of knowledge-based societies for 2002 in Dublin and hopes it will become an annual event.
Referring to the annual international workshop on the world economy at Davos, Switzerland, he said: "We need something like Davos in the social field. Maybe in 10 years people will refer to Dublin [when discussing the consequences of social change] in the same way they refer to Davos."
The foundation has produced many major reports on EU trends in the workplace.