Topic 7 Flashcards
what are the advantages of healthy working time?
healthy working time leads to healthy working conditions. it will increase workplace productivity and happiness.
what is family-friendly working time?
it includes a variety of policy options, ranging from a reduction of working hours to part-time work, to a right to adapt working hours for family hours. Reduced working hours appears to be the number 1 strategy for balancing work with family duties.
how can working time promote gender equality?
Measures such
as part-time work or family leave provide parents with the opportunity to spend more time taking care of their children or elderly relatives. However, if mothers are the only ones who make use of such leave, then, while these policies may indeed help promote work-family reconciliation, they may reinforce gender inequality. To promote gender equality, working time policies must therefore do their part to enable women to be on an equal footing with men in employment. This objective can be pursued by limiting excessively long hours among full-time workers and encouraging longer hours for part-timers, the vast majority of whom are women. Another possible approach would be to provide fathers with the right to take extended leave for family reasons or reduce their working hours when they have young children.
what is the relationship between working time and productivity?
Regular long working hours not only negatively affect the health and safety of workers but also decrease the productivity of enterprises. Workers working excessively long hours on a regular basis have shown reduced hourly productivity due to greater fatigue.
How can workers’ choice regarding working time be increased?
Laws have been enacted in a few countries, such as the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom, which provide individual workers with a right to request changes in their working hours. Such “right to request” legislation has the potential to advance workers’ ability to influence their working hours.
what are the necessary steps for putting into action decent working time?
1) reduction of regular long working hours
2) the equal treatment of part-time workers
3) the adoption of flexible work arrangements
4) the possibility to arrange work schedules to accommodate the needs to workers.
5) also, the support of the state will help put these dimensions into action.
