The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) has honed its focus on the issue of reducing working time. During a lunch/debate held on 22 February in Brussels, the independent research and training centre of the European Trade Union Confederation called for a more structured debate on the issue. The branch-level agreement obtained by IG Metall in Germany was briefly covered and a study, co-authored by Stan De Spiegelaere and Agnieszka Piasna, was presented. The study is titled: ‘The why and how of working time reduction’.
Why reduce working time? The study, published by the ETUI, shows that the conventional working week (excluding overtime hours) ranges between 35 hours in France and 40 hours in the majority of countries in eastern and central Europe. However, one third of workers would like to work fewer hours (between 35 and 36), as Stan De Spiegelaere explained in the presentation. The ETUI’s document lists some qualified arguments for why working time should be reduced, covering issues such as health and saf
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