Have actual working hours in developing countries begun to catch up with the shorter and more flexible hours in developed countries? Do factors such as age, gender and type of work affect working hours? In considering these and related issues, which are important in determining the economic and social wellbeing of working people, we can turn to an important study titled “Working Time Around the World: Trends in Working Hours, Laws and Policies in a Global Comparative Perspective.”* This 240-page study, authored by Sangheon Lee, Deirdre McCann and Jon C. Messenger, was released last week by the International Labor Organization (ILO), a UN agency that promotes decent work conditions through the collaboration of its members’ governments, employers and employees. It reviews, focusing on developing and transitional countries, the economic and social issues related to working time in terms of: (1) national laws and policies, (2) trends in actual working hours and (3) differences among sectors and types of workers. The major findings of the study can be summarized as follows: (1) 22 per cent of the global workforce, or 614.2 million workers, are estimated to be working in excess of 48 hours a week. (2) The trend in changes in weekly working hours during 1995-2004, despite the global convergence toward a statutory 40-hour week, is rather mixed. Enforcement of the statutory maximum work hours is estimated to be less than 50 percent globally. (3) The gap between industrialized and developing countries in terms of average working hours in the manufacturing sector has not narrowed much. Although a negative correlation exists between hours worked and per capita income, it masks wide differences among individual low-income and high-income countries. (4) In both industrialized and developing countries, working hours vary greatly among different groups of workers in different sectors, gender being a major factor. For male workers, working hours exceed 49 hours in many countries. For female workers, working hours are generally lower due to the part-time nature of their work. Age is not as significant a factor as gender. (5) Average hours of work are notably long in some services sectors such as wholesale and retail trade and hotels and restaurants; they are notably short in others such as government and education. (6) Workers in the informal economy, engaged primarily in self-employment -- which accounts for at least three-fifths of informal employment in developing countries -- toil very long hours, although self-employed women put in short hours in order to balance their family and work responsibilities.
Compared to the data for most countries included in the study, the data for Turkey are grossly inadequate in their coverage and quantity. The only data included for Turkey cover the average number of working hours in manufacturing during 2000-2003 -- with no data for 1995-1999 -- and the average number of hours worked in the service sectors in 2002. Turkey is not even included in the country by country statistical annex that includes detailed data on the number of workers by hours of work, age, gender and employment status (paid versus self-employed). It is not clear whether this is due to a lack of data submitted by the Turkish government to the ILO. If that is the case, I regard it as a major data deficiency of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security that needs to be rectified.
Working hours in Turkey are regulated on the basis of Law 4857 (the Labor Law) enacted in May 2003, to replace Law 1475 in effect since 1971 and the Regulation on Working Time Relating to the Labor Law, adopted by the ministry in June 2004. Article 63 of Law 4857 limits the general weekly working hours to a maximum of 45 hours, unchanged from Law 1475, with several exceptions and exemptions, whereas the Regulation on Working Time limits the daily working hours to maximum 11 hours. At the ministry’s Web site (<http://www.calisma.gov.tr>), which has statistics on various aspects of working life in Turkey, I could not find statistics on hours worked. The ILO data in the table below show that the average weekly actual working hours in Turkish manufacturing has risen during 2000-2003 for both male and female workers, in excess of 45 hours for all years. Turkey is among the few countries in the world in which the hours worked has exceeded 48 hours; others include Costa Rica, El Salvador, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand. The ILO data also show that in 2002 in Turkish service sectors the average weekly actual working hours varied considerably with the lowest in the education sector, 36.8 hours, and the highest in the hotels and restaurants sector, 63.5 hours.
On the positive side, shorter working time can improve workers’ health, enrich family lives, reduce occupational accidents, enhance productivity and promote gender equality at work. On the negative side, fewer working hours, especially in developing countries, can result in rising underemployment and widening poverty if workers fail to earn enough to support themselves and their families. Therefore, reduction in working time by itself is not an adequate indicator of increasing economic and social wellbeing. What also matter are real wages that are determined by hourly productivity and wage policies.
*(<http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/publication /wcms_082837.pdf>).
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