Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

We are working ever longer hoursFigure 6UK average hours worked per week39Average usual hours worked (weekly)3837361992 2001 2011Source: OECD (2013b); ONS (2011a).in Australia, Austria, Greece, Iceland and New Zealand,not to mention virtually all poorer countries. It is a far cryfrom the ‘7am to 7pm’ shifts that some claim is the Britishnorm and it hardly justifies The Guardian’s description ofthe UK as ‘Europe’s sweatshop’ (Gillan 2005). In a survey oftwenty countries, the British were least likely to agree withthe statement ‘I wish I could slow down the pace of my life’(Ipsos MORI 2013: 5).More than half of UK workers (55.4 per cent) work lessthan forty hours a week (including unpaid work) (OECD2012b). On this measure, the UK is more leisurely than boththe European average (42.2 per cent) and the OECD average(36 per cent). Only 11.7 per cent of British employees workmore than fifty hours a week, of whom three-quarters are81