The image of the laid-back, sun-bronzed Aussie relaxing on the beach took a major hit yesterday with new evidence showing Australians are working the longest hours in the developed world.
They are working so hard, in fact, that they risk making themselves sick, with higher than usual rates of stress, anxiety and depression, according to the research by the Australia Institute think-tank.
The analysis of countries including the US, Japan, Germany and France showed Australians, even if they had used up their annual leave, could take the rest of this year off and still have worked the same average number of hours of other industrialized countries.
"Whilst Australians often think of themselves as living in the land of the long weekend, they are now working the longest hours in the developed world and in fact are at risk of working themselves sick," Institute director Clive Hamilton said. He said Australian employees work an average of 1,855 hours a year compared with the developed country average of 1,643. Their Norwegian counterparts work just 1,376 hours a year on average, he added.
"Australians work harder than the super-efficient Germans, the Americans and even the Japanese who are known for the phenomenon of karoshi or `death by overwork,'" Hamilton said.
To bring their annual working hours down to the average, Australian employees would have to take their legislated four weeks' annual leave, then stop working from Nov. 20 until Dec. 31, he said.
While the number of public holidays enjoyed by Australian workers is on a par with the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, the annual leave entitlement is below the European average of five weeks a year.
"Australians are paying the price for overwork," Hamilton said.
"They are reporting higher degrees of stress and anxiety, and obesity, depression and heart disease are on the rise."
Shorter working hours in economically sound nations such as Switzerland, Germany and the Britain demonstrated that long working days were not necessary for economic strength, he added.
"On the contrary, working to the point where our personal and community bonds are weakened is not only economically inefficient, it is socially irresponsible," Hamilton said.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS