Work and Leisure

90 Chris Gratton and Peter Taylorthe European Union’s ‘Working Time Directive’. One in five worked an extra14 hours a week above their contracted hours, with managers, professionalsand specialist occupations the most typical working such long hours. Nineout of ten people in this study blamed increased workloads as a major causeof long hours working.An Institute of Management survey (Charlesworth 1996) also reinforcedGershuny’s findings. Out of a random sample of 3000 managers, 1073 questionnaireswere returned. Of these 12 per cent were chief executives/managing director status and a further 36 per cent senior management, with25 per cent junior management; 47 per cent of the sample were aged between45 and 54. Thus the sample included a high proportion of people at the topend of the jobs hierarchy. Nearly six in ten respondents claimed that theyalways worked in excess of their official working week; 49 per cent of thesample regularly took work home, with 18 per cent always doing so, while41 per cent of the sample regularly worked at weekends, with 14 per centalways doing so. More than eight in ten of respondents reported that theirworkload had increased over the past year, with 47 per cent stating that it hadincreased greatly.Furthermore, it is apparent that for many managers and professionalsworking longer hours is not a simple substitution effect whereby leisure timeis ‘bought’ by a premium pay rate. A study on work–life balance in the UK(Hogarth et al. 2000) reported that more than one in three employees whoworked in excess of their standard or fixed hours of work received neitheradditional pay nor time off in lieu for any additional hours worked. Themost common incidence of this was for senior managers – in two-thirds ofworkplaces they were neither paid nor had time off in lieu for additionalhours.Manual workers were most likely to be employed on the basis of anhourly rate and a fixed number of hours each week with the result thatovertime work strikes at the heart of the wage-effort bargain and, accordinglyis paid. In contrast the nature of the wage-effort bargain for professionaland managerial staff is much more nebulous, they are more likelyto be employed to fulfil responsibilities without reference to working time.Hence, additional hours are probably not even referred to as ‘overtime’.(Hogarth et al. 2000: 9)This impression is reinforced by the Department for Education andEmployment (DfEE 1999) which reported results from the Labour ForceSurvey in the winter of 1997–8. This indicated that while 23 per cent of maleworkers and 12 per cent of female workers worked paid overtime in theperiod covered, 18 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women worked unpaidovertime. Only 2 per cent worked both paid and unpaid overtime. While itwas manual occupations which topped the list of those working paid