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National Work-Life Conflict Study

Thursday, August 29, 2002

Canadian employers, especially large companies and organizations, are wringing an average of five days a month in unpaid overtime from increasingly stressed-out employees.

Employees have less and less control over the amount of overtime they work, whether paid or unpaid, and men are exploited worse than women.

Some of the worst offenders are employers are in the non-for-profit sector.

These findings are included in a massive new study commissioned by Health Canada into the conflict between working and family life in Canada. Called the 2001 National Work-Life Conflict Study, it was carried out by business professors Linda Duxbury of Carleton University in Ottawa and Chris Higgins of the University of Western Ontario in London.

One hundred organizations with 500 or more employees (in the private, public and non-for-profit sectors) were surveyed for the study. Results are considered accurate within 1.5% in 19 out of 20 cases.

The survey sample broke own this way: 46% public sector, 34% non-profit sector; 20% private, 55% women; 45% men, 46% managerial and professional, 40% non-professional, 14% technical; 56% with dependent care responsibilities, 44% without.

Among the findings:

  • employees "donate" a "significant proportion of unpaid time" to theiremployers ("approximately five days per month") .
  • employees are more likely to work unpaid overtime than paid overtime.
  • one in four employees now works 50 hours of week or more, up from one in
  • 10 a decade earlier.
  • The percentage able to limit their work hours to 35 to 35 hours a week
  • declined from 48% to just 275.
  • the amount of time per month spent performing supplemental work at home
  • and unpaid overtime is greater that spent in paid overtime.
  • employees donate a significant proportion of unpaid time to their employer
  • (approximately five days per month).
  • many employees feel that they cannot say "no" to overtime work (i.e. have
  • low control over work time);
  • overtime demands appear to be the most onerous in the not-for-profit sector;
  • men face more pressures to work paid and unpaid overtime than women, meaning that "there are still gender differences" in what employers expect from employees and also in the demands that employees place on themselves.
  • downsizing has been carried to the point of "organizational anorexia,"leaving that there are no longer enough employees to do the work ormanagers to strategize and plan.