As we enter the new century, a common goal has emerged: the removal or liberalization of restrictions on unsocial hours and the variation of working hours. This book draws together an international team to examine the process.

First Published in 2007. Lee, McCann and Messenger trace the theoretical background of the concept of working time before examining recent trends in working time laws in developing countries and countries in transition. The study then shifts its focus to developments in selected countries, considering both broad trends in working time at a national level and the structure and dynamics underlying these trends. The authors provide a remarkable set of policy suggestions that preserve health and safety, are ?family- friendly?, promote gender equality, enhance productivity and facilitate workers? choice and influence over their working hours. This book will be of great interest to policy-makers engaged with working conditions or health and safety, labour market experts, trade union leaders and workers? organizations, as well as academics and researchers in the fields of industrial relations, labour economics and labour law.

Since the 1980s, the process of European economic integration, within a wider context of globalization, has accelerated employment change and placed a new premium on ‘flexible’ forms of work organization. The institutions of employment relations, specifically those concerning collective bargaining between employers and trade unions, have had to adapt accordingly. The Transformation of Employment Relations focuses not just on recent change, but charts the strategic choices that have influenced employment relations and examines these key developments in a comparative perspective. A historical and cross-national analysis of the most important and controversial ‘issues’ explores the motivation of the actors, the implementation of change, and its evolution in a diverse European context. The book highlights the policies and the role played by different institutional and social actors (employers, management, trade unions, professional associations and governments) and assesses the extent to which these policies and roles have had significant effects on outcomes. This comparative analysis of the transformation of work and employment regulation, within the context of a quarter-century timeframe, has not been undertaken in any other book. But this is no comparative handbook in which changes are largely described on a country-by-country basis, but instead, The Transformation of Employment Relations is rather focused thematically. As Europe copes with a serious economic crisis, understanding of the dynamics of work transformation has never been more important.

Pathways through the life course have changed considerably in recent decades. Many of our assumptions about leaving home, starting new relationships and having children have been turned upside down. It is now almost as common to have children prior to marriage as afterwards, and certainly much more common to live together before marrying than to marry without first living together. Women are more likely to remain in the labour force after having children and many families struggle with problems of work-family balance at some stage in their lives, particularly when they have young children. But how much has really changed? Is there really more diversity in how individuals transition through these life course stages, or just variations at the margin with most people following a standard work and family life course? This volume makes use of rich longitudinal data from a unique Australian project to examine these issues. Drawing on broader theories of social change and demographic transitions in an international context, each chapter provides a detailed empirical assessment of the ways in which Australian adults negotiate their work and family lives. In doing so, the volume provides important insight into the ways in which recent demographic, social and economic changes both challenge and reproduce gender divisions.

Coming to grips with work hours requires difficult choices by individuals, families, organizations and society at large. This title examines the effects of work hours on individual, family and organizational health. It also considers why some people work long hours and the potential costs and benefits of this investment.

Keith Hancock is honoured and celebrated in this work, following the significant contributions he made not only to academic research and teaching, but also to the practice of industrial relations, through the various roles he held as Professor, Vice-Chancellor, Senior Deputy President of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and author of major government reviews and inquiries.The workshop held in his honour included a number of commentators. More specifically, the following issues arising from the papers were actively debated:Whether a decentralised and less regulated labour marketing is a necessary condition for meeting the requirements of global competition The effects of labour market deregulation on employment and the nature of employment on income distribution on wage inequality, on productivity, on work stress and on job satisfaction The consequences of labour market deregulation for Australians' work/care regime The impact of labour market deregulation on trade unions Whether macro-economic, policy has been unduly restrained by the risk of inflation in a deregulated labour market How labour market deregulation has affected industrial relations as a field of study and research, and How the nature of rights and obligations of employers, employees and unions have been affected by the changes in labour market regulation. Contributors include Keith Hancock, Ron McCallum, Barbara Pocock, Peter Saunders, Ron Callus, Sue Richardson, RG Gregory, Rae Cooper and Willy Brown.

Over recent years, many companies have developed an awareness of the importance of an active, rather than passive, approach to wellbeing at work. Whilst the value of this approach is widely accepted, turning theory into effective practice is still a challenge for many companies. The Routledge Companion to Wellbeing at Work is a comprehensive reference volume addressing every aspect of the topic. Split into five parts, it explores different models of wellbeing; personal qualities contributing to wellbeing; job insecurity and organizational wellbeing; workplace supports for wellbeing; and initiatives to enhance wellbeing. The international team of contributors provide a solid foundation to research and practice, including contemporary topics such as architecture, coaching, and fitness in the workplace. Edited by two of the world’s leading scholars on the subject, this text is a valuable tool for researchers, students, and practitioners in HRM and organizational psychology.

Ronald Burke has put together a collection of state-of-the-art research and writing about work hours and work addiction from around the world. This book is essential reading for academics, managers, human resource professionals and anyone else interested in identifying types of work addiction, learning about antecedents and consequences of workaholism, as well as how to help people achieve work life balance. The contributions from top notch researchers and academics in the field provide a rounded view of how the interplay between career aspirations, work motivation and working conditions contribute to health outcomes and effectiveness at work. Astrid M. Richardsen, Norwegian School of Management, Norway The Research Companion to Working Time and Work Addiction captures the essence and intricacies of an important and fascinating topic. It explores the body of writing on work-hours that until this book existed quite separately from literature on work addiction. As can be expected from the breadth of his knowledge and the consistent quality of his work, Ronald J. Burke has done a terrific job of editing a book that presents work addiction and working time in a way that is both scientifically sound and engaging. The twenty four contributors have done an excellent job of extending and refining our understanding of work addiction and working time in this collection of excellent conceptual and empirical chapters. This book is a must for all scholars and practitioners who are interested in this fascinating aspect of work life. Ayala Malach-Pines, Ben-Gurion University, Israel This is an excellent and unique book which not only addresses the detrimental effects of long working hours and work addiction, but also investigates the causes and treatment of workaholism. An outstanding volume which includes both conceptual and empirical chapters from distinguished academics and practitioners from several countries. This is essential reading for all those interested in health and well-being in the workplace and the establishment of satisfactory home and work life balances. The editor should be congratulated for this groundbreaking book. Marilyn J. Davidson, University of Manchester, UK This book is overdue. Someone, somewhere, a long time ago, should have put this book together, because its value is incalculable. The pace of change in the workplace has vastly increased, and workers see their jobs as more complex and fragmented. What is the prognosis? Where is it all going? What can be done about it? If anything? This book is more a handbook than a research companion, on all those aspects of the workplace that touch on or represent change, pace, workload, work addiction, work life balance, job satisfaction, job involvement, stress, conflict, values, Type A behaviour and other personality disorders. What s more, it delves into some of the more unknown elements of these aspects of work, in different countries. Read it. You ll not be disappointed. Janice Langan-Fox, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia This is a timely and needed book for all professionals who have concerns about issues related to quality of life and well-being. This book is an original piece prepared by a team of international experts, written in an informative and scholarly manner, and presents in an effective form the accumulated wealth of knowledge on the theme. This is a solid book that can satisfy both the academic readership and the professional community. I truly and sincerely recommend it. It is a must for people who are interested in this subject. Simon Dolan, ESADE Business School, Spain This Research Companion examines the effects of work hours on individual and family well-being and questions why people work hard and whether some can work too hard. It integrates contributions from two areas of research work hours and work addiction that have historically been pursued separately. Ronald Burke argues that while work hours have decreas

The book makes a major new contribution to the sociology of employment by comparing the quality of working life in European societies with very different institutional systems--France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, and Sweden. It focuses in particular on skills and skill development, opportunities for training, the scope for initiative in work, the difficulty of combining work and family life, and the security of employment. Drawing on a range of nationally representative surveys, it reveals striking differences in the quality of work in different European countries. It also provides for the first time rigorous comparative evidence on the experiences of different types of employee and an assessment of whether there has been a trend over time to greater polarization between a core workforce of relatively privileged employees and a peripheral workforce suffering from cumulative disadvantage. It explores the relevance of three influential theoretical perspectives, focussing respectively on the common dynamics of capitalist societies, differences in production regimes between capitalist societies, and differences in the institutional systems of employment regulation. It argues that it is the third of these--an 'employment regime' perspective--that provides the most convincing account of the factors that affect the quality of work in capitalist societies. The findings underline the importance of differences in national policies for people's experiences of work and point to the need for a renewal at European level of initiatives for improving the quality of work.

Including international comparative analysis alongside national case studies, this volume offers a wealth of information on the new trends which have emerged over the past decades - all of which were discussed at the recent 9th International Symposium on Working Time, Paris (2004). It looks at the increasing use of results-based employment relationships for managers and professionals, and the increasing fragmentation of time to more closely tailor staffing needs to customer requirements (e.g., short-hours, part-time work). Moreover, as operating/opening hours rapidly expand toward a 24-hour and 7-day economy, the book considers how this has resulted in a growing diversification, decentralization, and individualization of working hours, as well as an increasing tension between enterprises' business requirements and workers' needs and preferences regarding their hours. This new reality has raised some other challenging issues as well and the volume addresses those such as increasing employment insecurity and instability, time-related social inequalities, particularly in relation to gender, workers' ability to balance their paid work with their personal lives, and even the synchronization of working hours with social times, such as community activities.