Are Australians Overworked - Example

Are Australians Overworked Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Insert Date Here (Day, Month, Year) Facts Australians believe they are overworked and consequently they want to work less. To top the agony, they even feel their job interferes with their life. Unanimously most of the Australians want 34.6 hours working week and not a pie more, as is revealed by the 2008 Australian Work and Life Index shows. The index, which is produced by the University of South Australia compares with an actual average working week of 38.2 hours. According to the university's Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies' latest annual work-life index more than one in five Australians worked 48 hours a week or more. The index was a result of a survey that included 2831 workers nationwide. More than said their job interfered with activities outside of work. Index authors Barbara Pocock and Natalie Skinner say in their findings that the most common type of work-life interference is restriction of time due to work with friends and family". Of all the workers surveyed 55 per cent expressed they have often felt pressed and rushed for time. One person had too much of work to manage, said 54.5 per cent of the workers surveyed. Managers and professionals were most at the receiving end. The work-life balance was poorest for managers and professionals and for those who work in information, media and telecommunications, and mining, according to the index. Mothers and fathers had worse work-life interaction compared to those without parenting responsibilities, the research showed. The survey revealed two stark facts about mothers. One was that work-life conflict affected mothers very hard. And second was that mothers faired worst on work-life interaction than women who had no children. However this rule didn’t seem to be applying to men; whether or not they were fathers. Percentage of women, mothers or otherwise, who felt rushed was 60; and 70% mothers felt frequently so. "These findings suggest a widespread problem around working time for Australian workers, especially around long hours," the index summary said, and further added "three-quarters of those working long, full-time hours would like to work different hours, almost all of them less. The presumption that workers were putting in extra hours was contradicted by the survey. No one was willingly working more, but everyone was willing to work less; even if that meant getting less paycheck at the end of it all. The index stated that given the large proportion of men and women who would prefer not to work long hours, support for more reasonable working hours was important for better work-life outcomes in Australia. On the professional workers’ front, a majority of doctors seem to be reeling under the same overworked scenario. More than half of doctors working in Australia are fighting with their workload. This applies more to junior doctors, according to a survey conducted among 900 junior doctors. 41 per cent of these doctors said their performance was getting compromised on account of this. The grim scenario surrounding this sort of pressure, stress, and long hours was manifesting itself in suicidal tendencies, as the survey revealed. Apart from a couple of suicides on record, these doctors more often than not meet with car accidents while driving back home after long duty hours. According to Australian Medical Association (AMA) president, these facts ring alarm bells in the association and among doctors. In order to take some load off the existing doctors, AMA has called upon the government to urgently increase the number of junior doctors working in the public health system because more than half of the survey's respondents reported struggling with excessive workloads. The study of 914 doctors at the beginning of their careers in medicine was taken to provide a snapshot of the health and wellbeing of these doctors and assess how well they were coping with the pressure of balancing work, study and family commitments. Doctors nationwide and in New Zealand took part in the confidential, online, self-reporting questionnaire. Most respondents were 26-35 years old and 2 per cent worked in the Australian Capital Territory. The survey revealed 69 per cent of those surveyed were at the risk of job burnout and more than 50% at risk of compassion fatigue. Some of those affected turned to alcohol while others relied on friends, family, informal peer support etc for support. AMA attributed this to the system-generated pressures, pointing a finger at the government. The issue is the same across all industries in the country. For example, staff at Australia's big four banks are putting in one million hours of overtime a week, in addition to constant abuse from angry customers, research has found. Research conducted Finance Sector Union (FSU) found the amount of overtime worked by bank staff had increased three-fold over the past 14 years. Issues Structural Good life, as Australia has been touted as, seems to be no more in vogue. Last year, according to a study, most of the Australians could not take their annual leave, or some time off their work for a vacation. A study by The Australia Institute, based on a specially commissioned Newspoll, shows only 39 per cent of Australian workers took their allotted four weeks holiday. These 39 per cent are, as analysts say, are the privileged lot who (somehow) managed to get away. With fewer public holidays, than in other industrialized countries, in the Australian calendar, this certainly is a blow to the good life Australians are (in)famous for. When asked why they didn't take their holidays, around two in five employees said they were saving them up for later use. But an equal number (42 per cent) cited work-related reasons, including being too busy at work and not being able to get time off that suited them. Dogged by the long working hours and lack of proper break, more than 50% Australians, in this poll, said they would prefer to give up the 4 per cent pay increase than abandon leave. High-income earners (on more than $100,000 per year) and low-income earners (on less than $25,000) were most likely to say they were too busy to take four weeks off; and the high-income earners were also more likely to prefer a pay rise to more holidays. All this is attributed to structural issues; companies are not willing to (or unable to grant) leave to employees as per their (employees’) choice and others simply can’t avail the same since they are overworked. The study, Annual Leave in Australia, shows Australians, compared with other workers in industrialized countries, are not overly endowed with vacations or public holidays, contrary to stereotype. Australia's four weeks annual leave is below average compared with the European Union. On average, full-time EU workers have more than five weeks of annual leave, with Germans having almost six. As well, Australia's 11 public holidays a year - 10 in NSW - is around the EU average and well below Japan's 15. Though Britain and the Netherlands have only eight public holidays, both countries have much more annual leave than Australia. Quite a dampener! Structural issues are also there on account of increasing numbers of casual and contract workers, which tends to decline the proportion of men entitled to holiday leave. The study shows the weekly cost of "purchasing" an extra two weeks holiday was $16.47 for a worker on $30,000 and $41.26 for workers on $100,000. Industrial With regard to industrial issues, several bottlenecks have been identified that cause dissatisfied workforce and hamper further and healthy development of the country's professional population. These barriers can be defined as obstacles coming in the way of implementing effective work-life balance strategies. To name a few, these barriers are as below: a. Lack of an organizational culture that rewards overwork and high commitment. b. Lack of a proper, friendly and non-hostile working environment for employees. c. Attitudes and resistance of bosses, mangers, supervisors and middle management. d. Preference of senior management involved in recruiting to dealing with people perceived as similar to themselves; this is termed as homo-sociability. e. Proper understanding and lack of effective communication on work-life balance itself. Legal Legal aspects of the overworked Australia are surrounded by certain contradictions and problems, particularly with regard to proposed changes to Australia's industrial relations. This is especially seen in the light of the fact on how these changes will affect women workers. They argue that the reforms do nothing to address the most pressing labour management problem today in Australia - labour shortages and the need to better utilise existing human resources. The current focus on reducing wages to make certain groups more attractive to employers ignores supply side issues. For women who are primary carers, paid work needs to be worth their while. It needs to be decent work, allowing them to utilise their skills and experience, and it needs to be financially worthwhile (including consideration of child care costs), and it needs to enable women to integrate caring and employment responsibilities. Social This can be discussed in the light of This Family Impact Statement. This is a report about the effects on families of the Commonwealth Government's proposed (2005) 'WorkChoices' industrial relations legislation, prepared for Unions NSW (the Labor Council of New South Wales). It points out that the Prime Minister's undertaking during the 2004 election to prepare a Family Impact Statement on every new piece of proposed government legislation has not been met. Following a summary of the proposed IR changes and a snapshot of Australian families, nine Government claims about likely impacts are questioned and refuted. In the wake of this statement, the likely negative impacts on the employee's experience of working conditions and life quality, on family relationships and the worker's capacity to meet family responsibilities, and on the wider community in which families live and the ability of workers to meet their social obligations and enjoy life as a community member, can be discussed. Arguably a close link exists between the quality of life and working conditions of an employee. Clearly it is explicit that the family and work must not be seen as opposites, but as joint factors contributing to life dignity and satisfaction. For Australia it becomes imperative to have logical and ethical policies and practices in place in order to help employees meet both their professional and family demands without being left overworked, stressed or burnt out. Comparison Regulatory initiatives have been brought into force by most countries to cut down on long working hours. However, and surprisingly, Australia is one of the few countries to have turned a blind eye to this sort of an initiative. On the contrary, Australia is one of the few OECD countries to brought about a reversal to this trend. In comparison to other OECD countries, as found by a new research by RMIT, Australia has longer average working hours. This trend of long working hours has been on a steady increase since 1982, since more than 2 decades. While Australia tops the ranking, countries as Spain and Japan, on the other hand, have been going downwards in terms of working hours. This is a cause of concern for the workforce of the country. For a full-time Australian worker the working week increased on average by 3.7 hours between 1982 and 2000. This amounts to over 21 million extra hours per week or the equivalent of 550,000 full-time jobs. This is by far the largest increase in comparison to other OECD countries. Which employees work the long hours distinguishes Australia from other comparable countries as well. In most other OECD countries long hours is associated with high level managerial employees. It is not associated with blue-collar workers whose hours are effectively regulated. In Australia, on the other hand long hours are spread throughout the workforce - professionals and managers but also a significant number of blue-collar workers especially in transport, manufacturing and mining and tradespersons. Statistically, Australia, Japan and the USA have significantly higher proportions of long hours working than non-English EU speaking countries. Workers in all three nations report spending close to 40 hours a week on the job, on average: Americans work 42 hours, Canadians 41 hours, and Britons 39 hours. In comparison to this just over one fifth (22 percent) of UK men working full-time work long hours compared with anaverage of one tenth (11 percent) across the other EU member states. Conclusion Work-life balance is an issue of the day across all continents. Given Australia’s dismal record on this, looking into this issue is the call of the day. By making effective and employee-friendly changes, Australia will not only lead to further development but hang on to its proverbial "good life" theme; which, otherwise, is on a downside. Reference PERSPECTIVE. Melbourne University Law Review 26. Diederiks-Verschoor, I.H.P. & Butler, M.A. (2006).An Introduction to Air Law. Hague, Netherlands: Kluwer Law International, 2006 Gunn, J. (1988). High Corridors: Qantas, 1954-1970. University Queensland Press: Queensland. High Court of Australia. (2005) Povey - vs - Qantas Airways Ltd. Retrieved on November 5, 2008 from W.W.W: http://www.ipsofactoj.com/international/2006/Part01/int2006(01)-014.htm Wassenbergh, H.A., Masson-Zwaan, T.L. & de Leon, P. M. (1992). Air and Space Law: De Lege Ferenda: Essays in Honour of Henri A. Wassenbergh. Norwell, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Zeller, B. (1999). International Commercial Law for Business. Annandale, NSW: Federation Press. Pfeffer, J. (2005), "Producing competitive advantage through the effective management of people", Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 19 pp.95-106. Rebitzer, J.B., Taylor, L.J. (1999), When Knowledge is an Asset: Explaining the Organisational Structure of Large Law Firms, Western Reserve University/Carnegie Mellon University, Cleveland, OH/Pittsburgh, PA, . Read More