Reference URL as at Apr 01 2006:-
http://www.ottawasun.com/News/National/2006/03/30/1511627-sun.html
March 30, 2006
9-to-5 not working for most
Abnormal hours hard on health
By SHERYL UBELACKER, CP
TORONTO -- Dolly Parton may have bemoaned the fact that working 9 to
5 was a heck of a way to make a living, but it seems that for most
Canadians, having such regular hours would be a luxury.
In fact, a five-year survey by Statistics Canada suggests that only
one in three Canadians aged 25 to 54 have jobs that fall into the
category of standard full-time
work.
For all the rest -- those who were underemployed, overworked or
fluctuated from one extreme to the other -- having abnormal on-the-
job hours led to many singing the blues about high stress and poor
health.
We found that just one-third of workers are between 1,750 and 2,400
hours every year in all of the five years, said co-author Sebastien
Larochelle-Cote. This means you re working between 34 and 46 hours a
week, 52 weeks a year.
That is the standard, the normal full-time, full-year -- the thing
that everybody thinks that everybody does, he said yesterday. But
that s not necessarily the case
SHORT WORK YEAR
The 1997-2001 survey found that 15% of Canadians surveyed worked a
short work year: Under 1,750 hours, or the equivalent of fewer than
34 hours a week. Over the five-year period, about one in five workers
were on the job for more than 2,400 hours during any given year, or
46-plus hours a week.
But only 1% of workers consistently work above the 46-hour, 52-weeks-
a-year mark in all five years, said Larochelle-Cote. That means
that being overworked on a consistent basis is extremely rare.
The survey found that Canadians with unstable work hours tend to have
non-unionized, lower-paying and less-satisfying jobs without
retirement pension plans.
Financially, it has a huge impact on them because from year to year
they don t know what kind of income they can count on in terms of
things like RRSPs, educational savings plans, buying homes or
(putting) downpayments on cars, said Doug Saunders, a clinical
psychologist at the University of Toronto.
Not having the stability of a 9-to-5 job can lead to a wide range of
health problems, from anxiety and depression to sleep disorders and
digestive problems, he said.