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Stand-up comic Dave Cohen checks his facts in search of the typical overworked Brit and discovers some uncomfortable truths
Everybody knows we Brits work the longest hours in Europe. We've read it so many times it must be true, mustn't it?
I am a comedy writer and performer, not an investigative journalist. I once read an article by John Pilger and I used to cover meetings of Llantrisant village council for the Pontypridd Observer, although announcing the construction of a roundabout on Coedcae Lane was as close as I ever got to a scoop.
But in the course of making a documentary for the BBC about my shambolic efforts to try and bring some order into the everyday chaos of my life, I stumbled upon the truth: Brits do not work the longest hours in Europe. We don't even come second. Or third. In fact, by almost every statistical definition, we're barely average.
The UK was the first member to successfully opt out of the 1993 European Union Working Time Directive, which states no employee should work more than 48 hours a week. Another 13 EU countries have since followed our example.
Tomorrow, European Union ministers gather in Brussels to discuss whether or not we can keep the opt-out. Labour MEPs, who believe this long-hours culture encouraged by the opt-out is detrimental to workers' well-being, voted recently to opt back in. In Westminster, however, Labour ministers have picked a fight with their colleagues and are insisting we should keep the opt-out.
"Millions of employees and businesses in the UK and across Europe have benefited from freedom of choice on working hours for many years," Lord Mandelson says. "To take that choice away would be absurd. We're determined to protect the opt-out."
Achieving a work-life balance
But what if the whole point of the opt-out is irrelevant?
I was in Brussels interviewing Vladimir Spidla, the European commissioner for work, to see if he could help me achieve a better work-life balance, and to seek reassurance that this wasn't the kind of topic reserved exclusively for chattering middle-class Guardian readers in that hole in the kitchen where our Agas used to be before George Monbiot told us they were melting the polar ice caps.
I casually began a question with a sentence I believed to be true, because I'd read it so often I assumed it must be true, and everyone I've ever spoken to believes it too.
"Given that we Brits work more hours than anyone else in Europe …" I began, in English, before the Czech Republic minister began shaking his head.
"Non," he said firmly in French. "Non, non, non."
"He says 'no'," my translator offered helpfully.
"Jamais les Britanniques," he continued, "jamais les Britanniques", which even I could understand. At which point the translator, who clearly felt as strongly about this as Spidla, left the room and returned with a rolled-up photocopy of the sexily titled Fourth European Working Conditions Survey, a detailed statistical analysis produced by the European Foundation (Eurofound) to provide a snapshot of working practices across Europe.
The closer I looked at the figures, the more surprised I was. The survey examines hours worked across 31 countries in Europe, including every member of the EU. Whichever graph I looked at – number of days worked, number of hours, average weekly hours – we were statistically dull. Just to rub things in it was even mentioned in the report. ("Surprisingly, considering the importance of this debate in the British context, the UK's working hours are about average.")
I thought I'd better check the facts before allowing myself to believe that a senior minister in the European Union might just have a better idea of what he was talking about than "Britain's most averagely successful stand-up comedian".
But every survey said the same thing – the British do not work the longest hours in Europe, even before you include those hard-grafting ex-communists and Turkish farmers who boost the "hours-worked" statistics across the continent.
Then finally, I found a survey where we come out on top. It seems we lead the rest of Europe when it comes to working most at weekends and nights. This, you may not be surprised to learn, is thanks to our low-manufacturing, high-service-sector economy. To those who say Britain doesn't make anything anymore here's your answer – we do: we make cream teas and full English breakfasts.
According to the even more wittily titled Extended And Unusual Working Hours In European Companies 2004-05, hotels and restaurants provide the highest incidence of people working out of so-called normal hours. And the UK has the highest percentage of people in the EU working Saturdays (38% against the EU average of 25%), Sundays (27%; 15%) and nights (13%; 9%).
Before we proclaim this achievement too proudly, however, we should keep an eye on Denmark. The Danes scored pretty averagely in this survey, but last month 38 breast cancer sufferers from Denmark received compensation following claims their illness was brought on by working night shifts. The women received payments of between £3,000 and £123,000. So, having no manufacturing base could turn out to be very expensive for us in many other ways.
One set of rules, many countries
Is our urge to maintain the opt-out on working hours, then, nothing more than a patriotic desire to lead the world in provision of free miniature bath soaps?
Mats Tersson, a research director for Open Europe, usually described as a rightwing think-tank (a sceptic tank?), says opposition to the Working Time Directive is based not so much on the long hours as on its failure to meet the specific needs of each EU country.
"We just don't think it makes sense to make one set of rules for 27 countries with 27 different kinds of working practice," he says.
Mats, a Swede who has lived and worked here for nearly three years thanks to the flexibility of EU employment rules, has learned to understand the lack of nuance in our country's European debate, where you're either a Daily Mail-wielding xenophobic Europe hater or a sandal-wearing Lib Dem Latvian lover.
"We're not ashamed of being critical of Europe, but we're trying to take a reasonable approach. In terms of the British debate we say there are good things and bad things about Europe, and we want to put forward constructive ideas about how to change the bad things."
Having spent the last 11 years following the Eurosceptic agenda, Gordon Brown shouldn't be too surprised that his world-saving efforts ahead of the G20 summit are being met with opposition from so many EU leaders. Given that a row over the working hours opt-out seems completely unnecessary, why doesn't he just offer to give up the fight and join up?
Not only will this make him look magnanimous, it will win him new European friends – and may even force him to cut down the number of hours he spends focusing on telling Europe what to do.
What the papers say
"Britons are among the hardest-working people in Europe, with only Romanians and Bulgarians putting in longer hours" Daily Telegraph, 4 September 2008
"Workaholic Britons toil longer every week than any other nation in the developed world" Metro, 7 June 2007
"UK staff work longest hours in Europe, with some employees putting in more than 70 hours a week, according to research" Personnel Today, 9 August 2005
What the stats say
• Longest hours worked in Europe (31 countries surveyed)
1 Turkey: 54 hours; 29 UK: 35 hours (EU average: 39 hours)
• Percentage of people who work more than 48 hours
1 Turkey: 58%; 21UK: 13% (EU average: 15%)
All figures taken from the Fourth European Working Conditions Survey, 2007 (approximately 30,000 people questioned)
• "Reductions of an hour or more have taken place in Luxembourg (1 hour), and the UK (1.1 hours)" The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions – Working Time Developments 2007
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