Weekly maximum working time
IW study: Longer working days no health risk
Working days with ten hours and more – but also shorter working hours on other days. According to a study, this is not a problem for office workers. But not everyone sees it that way.
According to a study, long daily working hours in office workers do not mean an increased health risk. “Anyone who works for more than ten hours a day does not report significantly more often of exhaustion or other stress symptoms as employees with shorter working days,” says the evaluation of the employer-related institute of the German economy (IW) in Cologne, which is presented by the German Press Agency and which initially reported the “Welt am Sonntag”.
Government is planning reform of the Working Hours Act
“Especially with office workers, there are definitely scope – without negative effects,” write the study authors with a view to the reform of the Working Hours Act planned by the Federal Government. Union and the SPD had announced that in accordance with the European working time directive, they would create the possibility of a weekly instead of a daily maximum working hours in the Working Hours Act. According to the law, working hours may not exceed eight hours.
“Where longer daily working hours are accepted voluntarily, this does not affect satisfaction with work,” says the study. During very long daily working hours, no systematic negative abnormalities in working life have been observed – such as lower job satisfaction, greater exhaustion or weakened ability to work. Longer working days with potentially more than ten hours did not have a negative impact on the self -esteemed general health of the office workers or the number of disease -related failure days.
Does not apply to every activity
The basis for the evaluation of the IW was a work time recovery from the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Occupational Medicine (BauA) in 2021 – the latest available survey year – of more than 8,600 office workers. The authors make it clear that their results apply to people with office jobs. But: “Not every activity is suitable for longer working hours – for security and health reasons alone. But you can venture more flexibility when it comes to office levels.”
Unions run storm against the farewell of the eight-hour day that has been customary since 1918. An analysis of the Hugo Sinzheimer Institute for Labor Law (HSI) of the union-related Hans Böckler Foundation came to a different result than the IW: “It has long been proven that working hours of more than eight hours endanger health,” says HSI paper.
dpa
Source: Stern
