Transformations  in
Business & Economics

SELECTED ASPECTS OF WORKING CONDITIONS DIFFERENCES IN EU COUNTRIES⁴
Eva Grmanova, Eva Ivanova

ABSTRACT. In advanced societies, a significant indicator of social and political maturity is the quality of working conditions such as length of working hours, the proportion of night work. The aim of the article is to examine the working conditions in EU countries in terms of the employed persons working at night as a percentage of the total employment and an average number of usual weekly working hours in the main job. We observe the specifics of EU countries and the trends of their development in terms of convergence. Descriptive statistics, the analysis of time series development, multi-criteria evaluation (weighted sum) and sigma convergence method approaches are used as the research methods. The results show that the share of night work decreases overall. High values are found in Slovakia and Malta. In the long run, Greece has been characterised by a high average weekly working time, while the lowest value has long been kept by the Netherlands. Within the indicator, sigma convergence occurred from 2013 until 2018 the differences among countries have diminished. This is the result of increasing work productivity, which makes it possible to reduce the working hours.

KEYWORDS:  working conditions, working time length, night work, European Union.

JEL classification:  F66, J81, J53.

⁴Acknowledgement:  This paper was supported by the Slovak Ministry of Education's Scientific grant agency VEGA: "Digital economy and changes in the education system to reflect labour market demands". Project registration number: [Reg. No.: 1/0689/20].