Fair working time is a crucial aspect of employee well-being and productivity. It can contribute to establishing a balance between work demands and personal life, ensuring that employees are not overburdened and have sufficient time for rest and leisure. But several recent trends, including flexibilisation of working time, shift to remote and hybrid work, the rise of (bogus) self-employment, platform work, and more, are changing working time patterns. In this evolving environment, it is important to understand what ‘working time fairness’ should involve and what practices already exist to ensure it.
Happy to announce that our Visionary team is working on a study commissioned by UNI Europa titled “Fair Working Time Matters” (FATIMA).
The project aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on working time by establishing basic principles and a common understanding of what fair working time models should look like, how they can address the deterioration of working conditions and reduce the possible negative impact of the twin transition on workers.
The roles that VA will fulfil within the project are:
- Workstream 1 (research), including:
- Cross-sectoral and theoretical research, including literature review, exploratory interviews and statistical analysis
- Sectoral analysis of selected service sectors, including desk research, mapping of working time models and solutions (e.g., policy, collective agreements, codes of practice), and interviews with sectoral stakeholders, especially trade unions
- Development of a definition of ‘fair working time’ and criteria to assess working time fairness based on the gathered evidence
- Participation in sectoral workshops and presentation of results
- Workstream 3 (policy recommendations), including:
- Elaboration of policy recommendations based on the gathered evidence and the feedback gathered through sectoral workshops
- Presentation of final results and policy recommendations at a final conference
The study is expected to be finished by November 2025.
