4th and 5th worst in the developed world. That’s where NZ and Australia stand in an ILO survey of the percentage of workers that work more than 48 hours a week. NZ scores 23.6% and Australia 20.4%.
Despite my belief, the USA scored lower at 18.1%.
But we have it easy (as I sit here preparing to take off for a 1-3 month motorcycle trip). Spare a thought for the developing world and Indonesia and Peru in particular, where over 50% of workers spend more than 48 hours a week working.
More on working hours at the interesting Indian blog a wide angle view on India, by Nita J. Kulkarni. I have Nita’a blog on my list as she supplies a very different point of view on world events.
The ILO and CNN Money (the first link) could learn a bit from Nita. I cannot find the source material for the CNN Money article from the slow and archaic ILO website. It not only should be easily findable on the ILO website, but the CNN Money article should have linked there. The top search result for “48 hours” from the ILO website‘ is a document from 1962. Yes – 1962. That’s before even I was born. I did find this though, and through perseverance I finally found the summary of the source report. After that it got silly. A summary page forthe report referred to one place to buy the report (which was the wrong place) and another for a chapter in an encyclopedia – which gave a 404 error. The store, when I found it, returned nothing for a search of the study title. I give up.
Lance Wiggs 