Agenda Austria works with unclean methods and mocks women

2023-08-22 11:33:12

Employer-friendly “think tank” uses sleight of hand to suggest that working time reductions are already a reality in Austria

Vienna (OTS) – In the debate about shorter working hours and why these are not possible, “apparently no trick is left out”, says ÖGB labor law expert Martin Müller and is surprised by a recently published statistic of Agenda Austria. This includes part-time work and claims that Austria ranks at the lower end of the European comparison of working hours.

To claim that shorter working hours have long been a reality in Austria “is a slap in the face to all women who work part-time because they have to, not because they want to,” says Müller. Half of all women in Austria work part-time because either there is insufficient childcare, they are caring for relatives or there are simply no full-time jobs for them. “Using part-time work for the comparison in this context is a sleight of hand, because that goes hand in hand with lower pay,” says Müller and continues: “To equate this with a reduction in working hours with wage compensation is cynical and, to put it mildly, misogynistic.”

47 million unpaid overtime and overtime

As a special evaluation by Statistics Austria for AK Vienna shows, employees in Austria also worked 47 million extra and overtime hours without pay or time off in the past year alone. Women are even more affected than men.

23 percent of men are not paid, while women, who work part-time to a significantly higher degree, even get 28 percent. “It’s amazing when part-time workers are repeatedly asked to work more, while on the other hand those who work significantly more than they have to don’t get paid for this service,” says Müller.

“We are currently doing a lot more work in the same amount of time than we used to. Therefore, it is now a question of a gradual reduction in working hours. Our goal is a reduction in working hours that takes into account increased productivity and the ever-increasing intensification of work. The main goal is to reduce the number of working hours per week,” concludes the ÖGB labor law expert.