Working Time

Working time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labor. Unpaid labor such as personal housework or caring for children or pets is not considered part of the working week.

Many countries regulate the work week by law, such as stipulating minimum daily rest periods, annual holidays, and a maximum number of working hours per week. Working time may vary from person to person, often depending on location, culture, lifestyle choice, and the profitability of the individual's livelihood. For example, someone who is supporting children and paying a large mortgage will need to work more hours to meet basic costs of living than someone of the same earning power without children. Because fewer people than ever are having children, choosing part time work is becoming more popular.

Standard working hours (or normal working hours) refers to the legislation to limit the working hours per day, per week, per month or per year. If an employee needs to work overtime, the employer will need to pay overtime payments to employees as required in the law. Generally speaking, standard working hours of countries worldwide are around 40 to 44 hours per week (but not everywhere: from 35 hours per week in France to up to 112 hours per week in North Korean labor camps , and the additional overtime payments are around 25% to 50% above the normal hourly payments. Maximum working hours refers to the maximum working hours of an employee. The employee cannot work more than the level specified in the maximum working hours law.

Since the 1960s, the consensus among anthropologists, historians, and sociologists has been that early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure time than is permitted by capitalist and agrarian societies; for instance, one camp of !Kung Bushmen was estimated to work two-and-a-half days per week, at around 6 hours a day.Aggregated comparisons show that on average the working day was less than five hours.

Subsequent studies in the 1970s examined the Machiguenga of the Upper Amazon and the Kayapo of northern Brazil. These studies expanded the definition of work beyond purely hunting-gathering activities, but the overall average across the hunter-gatherer societies he studied was still below 4.86 hours, while the maximum was below 8 hours. Popular perception is still aligned with the old academic consensus that hunter-gatherers worked far in excess of modern humans' forty-hour week.

The industrial revolution made it possible for a larger segment of the population to work year-round, because this labor was not tied to the season and artificial lighting made it possible to work longer each day. Peasants and farm laborers moved from rural areas to work in urban factories, and working time during the year increased significantly. Before collective bargaining and worker protection laws, there was a financial incentive for a company to maximize the return on expensive machinery by having long hours. Records indicate that work schedules as long as twelve to sixteen hours per day, six to seven days per week were practiced in some industrial sites.

                                                     1906 – strike for the 8 working hours per day in France

Over the 20th century, work hours shortened by almost half, mostly due to rising wages brought about by renewed economic growth, with a supporting role from trade unions, collective bargaining, and progressive legislation. The workweek, in most of the industrialized world, dropped steadily, to about 40 hours after World War II. The limitation of working hours is also proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and European Social Charter. The decline continued at a faster pace in Europe: for example, France adopted a 35-hour workweek in 2000. In 1995, China adopted a 40-hour week, eliminating half-day work on Saturdays (though this is not widely practiced). Working hours in industrializing economies like South Korea, though still much higher than the leading industrial countries, are also declining steadily.

Technology has also continued to improve worker productivity, permitting standards of living to rise as hours decline. In developed economies, as the time needed to manufacture goods has declined, more working hours have become available to provide services, resulting in a shift of much of the workforce between sectors.

Economic growth in monetary terms tends to be concentrated in health care, education, government, criminal justice, corrections, and other activities that are regarded as necessary for society rather than those that contribute directly to the production of material goods.

In the mid-2000s, the Netherlands was the first country in the industrialized world where the overall average working week dropped to less than 30 hours.

Gradual decrease in working hours

Most countries in the developed world have seen average hours worked decrease significantly. For example, in the U.S in the late 19th century it was estimated that the average work week was over 60 hours per week. Today the average hours worked in the U.S. is around 33, with the average man employed full-time for 8.4 hours per work day, and the average woman employed full-time for 7.7 hours per work day. The front runners for lowest average weekly work hours are the Netherlands with 27 hours, and France with 30 hours. At current rates the Netherlands is set to become the first country to reach an average work week under 21 hours. In a 2011 report of 26 OECD countries, Germany had the lowest average working hours per week at 25.6 hours.

The New Economics Foundation has recommended moving to a 21-hour standard work week to address problems with unemployment, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, overworking, family care, and the general lack of free time.Actual work week lengths have been falling in the developed world.

Factors that have contributed to lowering average work hours and increasing standard of living have been:

• Technological advances in efficiency such as mechanization, robotics and information technology.
• The increase of women equally participating in making income as opposed to previously being commonly bound to homemaking and childrearing exclusively.
• Dropping fertility rates leading to fewer hours needed to be worked to support children.

Recent articles supporting a four-day week have argued that reduced work hours would increase consumption and invigorate the economy. However, other articles state that consumption would decrease. Other arguments for the four-day week include improvements to workers' level of education (due to having extra time to take classes and courses) and improvements to workers' health (less work-related stress and extra time for exercise). Reduced hours also save money on day care costs and transportation, which in turn helps the environment with less carbon-related emissions. These benefits increase workforce productivity on a per-hour basis.

Workweek structure:

The structure of the work week varies considerably for different professions and cultures. Among salaried workers in the western world, the work week often consists of Monday to Friday or Saturday with the weekend set aside as a time of personal work and leisure. Sunday is set aside in the western world because it is the Christian sabbath.

The traditional American business hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday, representing a workweek of five eight-hour days comprising 40 hours in total. These are the origin of the phrase 9-to-5, used to describe a conventional and possibly tedious job. Negatively used, it connotes a tedious or unremarkable occupation. The phrase also indicates that a person is an employee, usually in a large company, rather than self-employed. More neutrally, it connotes a job with stable hours and low career risk, but still a position of subordinate employment. The actual time at work often varies between 35 and 48 hours in practice due to the inclusion, or lack of inclusion, of breaks. In many traditional white collar positions, employees were required to be in the office during these hours to take orders from the bosses, hence the relationship between this phrase and subordination. Workplace hours have become more flexible, but even still the phrase is commonly used.

Several countries have adopted a workweek from Monday morning until Friday noon, either due to religious rules (observation of shabbat in Israel whose workweek is Sunday to Friday afternoon) or the growing predominance of a 35–37.5 hour workweek in continental Europe. Several of the Muslim countries have a standard Sunday through Thursday or Saturday through Wednesday workweek leaving Friday for religious observance, and providing breaks for the daily prayer times.

Overtime rules

Many professional workers put in longer hours than the forty-hour standard. In professional industries like investment banking and large law firms, a forty-hour workweek is considered inadequate and may result in job loss or failure to be promoted. Medical residents in the United States routinely work long hours as part of their training.

Workweek policies are not uniform in the U.S. Many compensation arrangements are legal, and three of the most common are wage, commission, and salary payment schemes. Wage earners are compensated on a per-hour basis, whereas salaried workers are compensated on a per-week or per-job basis, and commission workers get paid according to how much they produce or sell.

Under most circumstances, wage earners and lower-level employees may be legally required by an employer to work more than forty hours in a week; however, they are paid extra for the additional work. Many salaried workers and commission-paid sales staff are not covered by overtime laws. These are generally called "exempt" positions, because they are exempt from federal and state laws that mandate extra pay for extra time worked.The rules are complex, but generally exempt workers are executives, professionals, or sales staff.For example, school teachers are not paid extra for working extra hours. Business owners and independent contractors are considered self-employed, and none of these laws apply to them.

Generally, workers are paid time-and-a-half, or 1.5 times the worker's base wage, for each hour of work past forty. California also applies this rule to work in excess of eight hours per day, but exemptions and exceptions significantly limit the applicability of this law.

In some states, firms are required to pay double-time, or twice the base rate, for each hour of work past 60, or each hour of work past 12 in one day in California, also subject to numerous exemptions and exceptions.This provides an incentive for companies to limit working time, but makes these additional hours more desirable for the worker. It is not uncommon for overtime hours to be accepted voluntarily by wage-earning workers. Unions often treat overtime as a desirable commodity when negotiating how these opportunities shall be partitioned among union members.

Many modern workplaces are experimenting with accommodating changes in the workforce and the basic structure of scheduled work. Flextime allows office workers to shift their working time away from rush-hour traffic; for example, arriving at 10:00 am and leaving at 6:00 pm. Telecommuting permits employees to work from their homes or in satellite locations (not owned by the employer), eliminating or reducing long commute times in heavily populated areas. Zero-hour contracts establish work contracts without minimum-hour guarantees; workers are paid only for the hours they work.

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Contingent work.

Contingent work or casual work is an employment relationship which is considered non-permanent. These jobs are typically part time (typically with variable hours), have limited job security, and result in payment on a piece work basis. Contingent work is usually not considered to be a career or part of a career. One of the features of contingent work is that it usually offers little or no opportunity for career development. Contingent workers are also often called freelancers, independent professionals, temporary contract workers, independent contractors, or consultants.

Contingent work is not an entirely neutral term as commentators who use the phrase generally consider it to be a social problem. Employment agencies and classified advertising media are more likely to use the phrase casual work, particularly to attract students who wish to earn money during the summer vacation but who would not consider the work as part of a long-term career. All casual work is considered to be contingent work, but not all contingent work is casual. In particular, part time jobs, or jobs in organisations that have a high staff turnover, may be considered contingent work but may not be casual.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the nontraditional workforce includes "multiple job holders, contingent and part-time workers, and people in alternative work arrangements". These workers currently represent a substantial portion of the US workforce, and "nearly four out of five employers, in establishments of all sizes and industries, use some form of nontraditional staffing". "People in alternative work arrangements" includes independent contractors, employees of contract companies, workers who are on call, and temporary workers.

Industrial Revolution

The concept of what is now considered to be a job, where one attends work at fixed hours was rare until the Industrial Revolution. Before then, the predominant regular work was in agriculture. Textile workers would often work from home, buying raw cotton from a merchant, spinning it and weaving it into cloth at home, before selling it on.

In the 1770s, cotton mills started to appear in Lancashire, England, using Richard Arkwright's spinning jenny and powered by water wheels. Workers would often work in twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. However, they would still often be paid on a piece work basis, and fines would be deducted from their pay for damage to machinery. Employers could hire and fire pretty much as they pleased, and if employees had any grievance about this, there was very little that they could do about it.

Trade union movement

Individual workers were powerless to prevent exploitation by their employers. However, the realisation that all workers generally want the same things, and the benefits of collective bargaining, led to the formation of the first trade unions. As trade unions became larger, their sphere of influence increased, and started to involve political lobbying, resulting in much of the employment law that is now taken for granted.

20th century decline in manufacture

Manufacturing has declined during the 20th century in the Western world. Many manufacturing organisations that employ large numbers of people have relocated their operations to developing nations. As a result, whenever they do hire staff in Europe or North America, they often need to be able to fire them quickly and keep costs as low as possible, to remain competitive. As a result, some employers may look for loopholes in employment law, or ways of engaging staff that allows them to circumvent union-negotiated employment law, creating what is now known as contingent work.

Advantages and disadvantages of using contingent workers

Advantages	Disadvantages
Flexibility in type and amount of labor resources	Lack of loyalty to employer or company
Save costs in benefits and tax	Disturbs organization's core morale and culture
Immediate access to expertise not present internally	Training costs
Savings in long-term compensation costs	Worker carries the full risk, limited benefits

Contingent workers are at a high risk of being injured or killed on the job. In 2015, 829 fatal injuries (17% of all occupational fatalities) occurred among contract workers, which only represent a subset of contingent workers.Studies have also shown a higher burden of non-fatal occupational injuries and illnesses among contingent workers compared to those in standard employment arrangements.There are many possible contributing factors to the high rates of injuries and illnesses among contingent workers. They are often inexperienced and assigned to hazardous jobs and tasks, may be reluctant to object to unsafe working conditions or to advocate for safety measures due to fear of job loss or other repercussions,and they may lack basic knowledge and skills to protect themselves from workplace hazards due to insufficient safety training.According to a joint guidance document released by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), both staffing agencies and host employers (i.e., the clients of staffing agencies) are responsible for providing and maintaining a safe and healthy work environment for contingent workers.Collaborative and interdisciplinary (e.g., epidemiology, occupational psychology, organizational science, economics, law, management, sociology, labor health and safety) research and intervention efforts are needed to protect and promote the occupational safety and health of contingent workers.

Contingent work jobs are widely referred to as McJobs . This term was made popular by Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, and stems from the notion that jobs in McDonald's and other fast food and retail businesses are frequently insecure.

Critics say that it is unfair to tarnish all employment agencies with the brush of contingent work. Some say that temporary work patterns such as self-employment, consultancy and telecommuting can bring benefits of flexibility not just to employers but also employees, can improve work-life balance, and can make it easier for workers to manage family responsibilities. However, it is argued that such benefits are realised only in middle class jobs, whose entry barriers are too high for most workers with below-average earnings.

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Temporary Work.

Temporary work or temporary employment (also called oddjobs) refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "outsourcing", "freelance"; or the word may be shortened to "temps". In some instances, temporary, highly skilled professionals (particularly in the white-collar worker fields, such as law, engineering, and accounting) refer to themselves as consultants.

Temporary work is different from Secondment, which is the assignment of a member of one organisation to another organisation for a temporary period, and where the employee typically retains their salary and other employment rights from their primary organisation but they work closely within the other organisation to provide training and the sharing of experience.

Temporary workers may work full-time or part-time depending on the individual situation. In some instances, temporary workers receive benefits (such as health insurance), but usually benefits are only given to permanent employees as a cost-cutting measure by the employer to save money. Not all temporary employees find jobs through a temporary employment agency. With the rise of the Internet and gig economy (a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs), many workers are now finding short-term jobs through freelance marketplaces: a situation that brings into being a global market for work.

A temporary work agency, temp agency or temporary staffing firm finds and retains workers. Other companies, in need of short-term workers, contract with the temporary work agency to send temporary workers, or temps, on assignments to work at the other companies. Temporary employees are also used in work that has a cyclical nature, requiring frequent adjustments to staffing levels.

The staffing industry in the United States began after World War II with small agencies in urban areas employing housewives for part-time work as office workers. Over the years the advantages of having workers who could be hired and fired on short notice and were exempt from paperwork and regulatory requirements resulted in a gradual but substantial increase in the use of temporary workers, with over 3.5 million temporary workers employed in the United States by 2000.

There has indeed been a great paradigm shift since the 1940s in the way firms utilize the temporary worker. Throughout the Fordist era, temporary workers made up a rather marginal proportion of the total labor force in North America. Typically, temporary workers were white women in pink collar, clerical positions who provided companies with a stop-gap solution for permanent workers who needed a leave of absence, when on vacation or in illness. In contrast, in the Post-Fordist period, characterized by neoliberalism, deindustrialization and the dismantling of the welfare state, these understandings of temporary labor began to shift. In this paradigm, the idea of the temporary worker as a stopgap solution to permanent labor became an entirely normative employment alternative to permanent work.

Therefore, temporary workers no longer represented a substitute for permanent workers on leave but became semi-permanent, precarious positions routinely subject to the threat of elimination because of fluctuations in a company's products. In the context of today's temporary labor force, both people and positions have become temporary, and temporary agencies use the temporary worker in a systematic and planned, as opposed to impromptu manner.

As the market began to transform from Fordism to a post-Order regime of capital accumulation, the social regulation of labor markets and the very nature of work began to shift.This transformation has been characterized by an economic restructuring that emphasized flexibility within spaces of work, labor markets, employment relationships, wages and benefits. Most governments in Western Europe started to deregulate temporary work. And indeed, global processes of neoliberalism and market rule contributed greatly to this increasing pressure put on local labor markets towards flexibility. This greater flexibility within labor markets is important at the global level, particularly within OECD countries and liberal market economies (see liberal market economy).

The temporary labor industry is worth over €157 billion per year, and the largest agencies are spread across over 60 nations. The biggest temporary work agencies are most profitable in emerging economies of the Global North, and those that have undergone market liberalization, deregulation and (re)regulation.

The desire to market flexible, adaptable temporary workers has become a driving, monetary oriented objective of the temporary work industry. This has caused individual agencies to adopt practices that focus on competition with other firms, that promote “try before you buy” practices and that maximize their ability to produce a product: the temporary worker. Through this process, the ideal temporary worker has today become largely imagined, produced and marketed by temporary agencies.

The role of a temp agency is as a third party between client employer and client employee. This third party handles remuneration, work scheduling, complaints, taxes, etc. created by the relationship between a client employer and a client employee. Client firms request the type of job that is to be done, and the skills required to do it. Client firms can also terminate an assignment and are able to file a complaint about the temp. Work schedules are determined by assignment, which is determined by the agency and can last for an indeterminate period of time, extended to any point and cut short. Because the assignments are temporary, there is little incentive to provide benefits and the pay is low in situations where there is a lot of labor flexibility. (Nurses are an exception to this as there is currently a shortage). Workers can refuse assignment but risk going through an indeterminate period of downtime since work is based on availability of assignments, which the agency cannot “create” only fill.

Whether the work comes through an independent gig economy source or a temp agency, when a temporary employee agrees to an assignment, they receive instructions pertaining to the job. The agency also provides information on correct work attire, work hours, wages, and whom to report to. If a temporary employee arrives at a job assignment and is asked to perform duties not described when they accepted the job, they may call an agency representative for clarification. If they choose not to continue on the assignment based on these discrepancies, they will most likely lose pay and may undermine chances at other job opportunities. However, some agencies guarantee an employee a certain number of hours pay if, once the temporary employee arrives, there is no work or the work isn't as described. Most agencies do not require an employee to continue work if the discrepancies are enough to make it difficult for the employee to actually do the work.

A temporary work agency may have a standard set of tests to judge the competence of the secretarial or clerical skills of an applicant. An applicant is hired based on their scores on these tests, and is placed into a database. Companies or individuals looking to hire someone temporarily contact the agency and describe the skill set they are seeking. A temporary employee is then found in the database and is contacted to see if they would be interested in taking the assignment.

It is up to the temporary employee to keep in constant contact with the agency when not currently working on an assignment; by letting the agency know that they are available to work they are given priority over those who may be in the agency database who have not made it clear that they are ready and willing to take an assignment. A temp agency employee is the exclusive employee of the agency, not of the company in which they are placed (although subject to legal dispute). The temporary employee is bound by the rules and regulations of the client firm, even if they contrast with those of the company in which they are placed.

Benefits for client firms

There are a number of reasons as to why a firm utilizes temp agencies. They provide employers a way to add more workers for a short term increase in the workforce. Using temps allows firms to replace a missing regular employee. A temp worker’s competency and value can be determined without the inflexibility of hiring a new person and seeing how they work out. Utilizing temp workers can also be a way of not having to pay benefits and the increased salaries of a regular employees. A firm can also use temp workers to vary compensation in what would normally be an illegal or impossible manner. The role of temp workers in the work space can also have the effects of coercing regular employees into taking more work for less pay. Additionally, temp workers are less likely to sue over mistreatment, which allows firms to reduce the costs of employment in high-stress, regulated jobs.

Growth of temporary staffing

Temp agencies are a growing part of industrial economies. From 1961-1971 the number of employees sent out by temporary staffing agencies increased by 16 percent. Temporary staffing industry payrolls increased by 166 percent from 1971 to 1981, and 206 percent from 1981 to 1991, and 278 percent from 1991 to 1999. The temporary staffing sector accounted for 1 out of 12 new jobs in the 90’s. In 1996, $105 billion, worldwide,in staffing agency revenues. By 2008, $300 billion was generated, worldwide, in revenues for staffing agencies. The Temporary Staffing Industry accounts for 16% of job growth in the U.S. since the great recession ended, even though it only accounts for 2% of all-farm jobs. This growth has occurred for a number of reasons. Demand in temporary employment can be primarily attributed to demand by employers and not employees  A large driver of demand was in European labor market. Previously, temporary employment agencies were considered quasi-legal entities. This reputation shied potential client employers away. However, in the later half of the 20th century, there would be shift predominated by legal protections and closer relationships with primary employers. This combined with the tendency for growth of the TSI in countries where there are strict regulations on dismissal of hired employees but loose regulations on temporary work, growth is much faster compared to industrialized nations without these labor conditions.

Occupational safety and health

Temporary workers are at a high risk of being injured or killed on the job. In the US, 829 fatal injuries (17% of all occupational fatalities) occurred among contract workers in 2015. Studies have also shown a higher burden of non-fatal occupational injuries and illnesses among temporary workers compared to those in standard employment arrangements.There are many possible contributing factors to the high rates of injuries and illnesses among temporary workers. They are often inexperienced and assigned to hazardous jobs and tasks, may be reluctant to object to unsafe working conditions or to advocate for safety measures due to fear of job loss or other repercussions, and they may lack basic knowledge and skills to protect themselves from workplace hazards due to insufficient safety training. According to a joint guidance document released by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), both staffing agencies and host employers (i.e., the clients of staffing agencies) are responsible for providing and maintaining a safe and healthy work environment for temporary workers. Collaborative and interdisciplinary (e.g., epidemiology, occupational psychology, organizational science, economics, law, management, sociology, labor health and safety) research and intervention efforts are needed to protect and promote the occupational safety and health of temporary workers.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Easy hire: Those meeting technical requirements for the type of work are often virtually guaranteed a job without a selection process. In this sense, it could be argued that it would be easier to find work as a temporary worker. Also, in some cases, agencies will hire temporary workers without submission of a resume or an interview
• Potential for flexible hours
• There is an opportunity to gain experience—companies are all unique, so the temporary worker will be exposed to a plethora of different situations and office procedures
• There are companies that do not hire internally and use these staffing services only. They are a good gateway to get employment with a certain company.
• Try Before You Buy-Temporary staff allowing a business to ‘TRY’ a worker as part of their team and to confirm that they are the perfect fit before taking them on board long-term, if needed.

Cons

Workers, scholars, union organisers and activists have identified many cons associated with temporary work, and more recently the gig economy. These include:

• Lack of control over working hours and the potential for immediate termination for refusing an assigned schedule.
• Positions often are with high turnover rates. Research suggests that plants choose temporary workers over permanent ones when they expect output to fall, which allows them to avoid costs associated with laying off permanent employees.
• Lack of reference as many employers of experienced job positions do not consider work done for a temporary agency as sufficient on a resume.
• In the United States, the gradual replacement of workers by temporary workers resulted in millions of workers being employed in low-paid temporary jobs.
• In the US, the hourly wage paid to a temporary worker is 75% to 80% of what direct-hire employees are paid. Additionally, they often receive few or no employment benefits, such as health insurance, and seldom become full-time employees from their temporary positions.
• Unlike temporary workers hired through a staffing agency, many people in the gig economy don't report their income to the IRS, resulting in an estimated $214.6 billion in the United States alone of unreported income.This can result in fines or jail time.

Legal issues

Scholars have argued that neoliberal policies have been a prominent component in the erosion of the standard employment relationship. This precarious new model of employmenthas greatly reduced the worker’s ability to negotiate and, in particular, with the introduction of advanced technology (that can easily replace the worker), reduced the temp’s bargaining power. Internet of Things-based companies such as Uber have come into conflict with authorities and workers for circumventing labour and social security obligations. It has been suggested that labour regulations in North America do little in addressing labour market insecurities and the precarious nature of temporary labour. In many cases, legislation has done little to acknowledge or adapt to the growth of non-standard employment in Canada.

In the European Union, temporary work is regulated by the Temporary Agency Work Directive and the Member States' laws implementing that directive.

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