This week’s Listener has a story by Linley Boniface on the amount of overwork New Zealanders are doing. Per capita New Zealanders work more than 1300 hours per year, second only in the OECD to Icelanders, who work 1500. Boniface notes that 19% of New Zealanders work more than 50 hours a week, 40% have variable hours of work, 18% do shift work and about a quarter work some hours at night. And, no, the survey she is quoting did not only talk to finance workers! Boniface did however talk to one South Island finance worker at a large lending support unit:
“The management seems very reluctant to replace the people who leave, so the workload is now far too great for the number of people we have. There are no peaks and troughs any more – it’s all peaks… A lot of my colleagues work overtime in the evenings, and come in for four or five hours in the weekend to try to get the workload down to a manageable level for the following week. Even the people who have OOS are asked to work overtime, which I think is awful.”
Finsec, along with many other community organisations is campaigning to change New Zealand’s overwork culture by supporting the Flexible Working Hours Bill currently before Parliament. The bill give workers the right to negotiate more flexible working hours with their employers.
(Thanks to Ben Harris-Roxas for the photo)
...the gossip 
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