KEY POINTS:
Sam Parnell would turn in his grave if he could see what Kiwis are doing with the 40-hour week he fought for.
Our workforce now works longer hours than any other country in the OECD apart from Iceland - another small island state.
We've always worked hard to make a living in a small economy - it's something New Zealanders know instinctively, built into their expectations and their myths. "Work hard and play hard" is the dictum.
But if we're also working longer, there could be little time left for play.
A Labour Department work-life balance survey found almost half of all respondents working between 40 and 50 hours a week, and 19 per cent worked more than 50 hours.
The Census puts it even higher, with a quarter of employees - 35 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women - saying they worked more than 50 hours a week.
Even that might not reflect the true situation, given the changing work patterns during the past 20 years. The Labour Department survey found 39 per cent said they worked extra hours in their own time every week to "get the job done".
Michael Law, a senior lecturer in labour studies at Waikato University, says differences between paid overtime and "donated time" can muddle the picture.
The 1991 Employment Contracts Act created an environment in which many workers lost penal rates for work done after the normal working week.
Law says in some industries a tightened labour market means he is seeing "just a hint of a trend" for employers to reintroduce time-and-a-half or double-time, even in non-unionised workplaces.
"There are also jobs where the overtime expected in a particular period is rolled into averaged weekly or fortnightly earnings.
"It's most successfully seen in the dairy workers' union and with dairy manufacturers like Fonterra, where you have seasonal peaks and troughs.
"That's an example where there is good flexibility as well as protection for the workers, which almost only happens in unionised industries."
Law says far more alarming are reports from his international students of their experiences in part-time jobs in the restaurant and fringe retail sectors.
"At the lower end, the cheaper restaurants and food halls that employ migrants and international students are engaging in dodgy labour practices," he says.
These include working for extended periods on a so-called "trainee wage", which is less than the minimum wage, and working for more hours than are recorded in the wage book (which is open for inspection by the Labour Department) so, in effect, they are working for less than the minimum wage.
They are also being required to stay on to clean up or to work through lunch breaks if the shop or restaurant is busy.
Even further up the food chain, the hours of work become blurred.
"A lot of occupations, young lawyers as an example, tell us they expect to work 65 hours a week when they take up the job.
"In tertiary education, universities, wananga, polytechs, teachers' colleges, they are unionised but there is a lot of extra time put in.
"Marking is a big one. Preparing for teaching has no boundaries. Even at the primary and secondary level, few of those people would be working just the hours they are paid for.
"This problem of donated time gets complicated in people-focused industries. We want to do the right thing for our clients, our patients, our students.
"It's not just employer-driven, it's self-driven."
A further complication is jobs where performance is measured as a contribution to promotion.
"It is hard to meet the promotion criteria in the confines of the 40-hour week," Law says. "So in the lower-paid areas, people get pressure from their employers to donate time.
"At the higher end of the workforce, in the more professional sectors, there is a mix of employer expectation and individuals buying into working longer hours."
The extra hours come at a price.
A web-based survey by the Families Commissioner found a third of those who reported working extra hours said it put their relationships under strain.
Many of those who reported working long hours said they were not given overtime or time off in lieu.
About a quarter said they did the extra hours because their organisation was under-staffed or "it's the nature of the job".
Chief commissioner Rajen Prasad says Labour Day, which is supposed to celebrate New Zealand achieving the 40-hour week, has instead become a chance to reflect how the 40-hour week is slipping away.
He says cultural pressures are changing and not for the positive.
"If you want to be seen as a good employee, you have to put time in, so a workplace culture grows up.
"The people we spoke to say similar things - that if their career is to advance, they have to work that much harder."
It's also common that jobs are scoped badly, so employees are never able to get on top of the work expected of them.
Prasad says it is possible to make workplaces family friendly without losing production by introducing things like flexible working hours, paid parental leave, on-site or paid childcare, and the use of technology to allow staff off-site access to systems or to work from home.
The pay-off can be increased commitment and loyalty to the organisation and staff retention.
"If you look back to the Auckland power crisis, it's amazing how quickly we thought of novel ways get jobs done," Prasad says.
"All this working more than 40 hours has a serious impact on families and can create an enormous strain on individuals.
"People also said that while they might be able to get time off to attend birthdays, they miss out on things that happen to their children in the middle of the day, like school camps or performances or prizegivings. They feel they're missing an important part of the development of their children."
He says employers need to look at life-cycle issues within their workforce.
People with young children will have different time and flexibility needs than those whose children have left home. "The nature of work should alter to make it possible to take time off to go and help at a school camp."
Peter Conway, the economist for the Council of Trade Unions, says the statistics are showing a slight decline in the amount of overtime, but this probably reflects under-reporting rather than that we are working fewer hours.
"The boundary is slipping between what is work and not work," Conway says.
"At some levels too, there is a blurring about being at work and not being at work.
"It is more socially acceptable now to take a work call at the weekend."
He says it's best to address the problem as early as possible.
"When you think of the range of things people discuss when they start a job, pay and superannuation and training, they also need clear understanding of the hours of work.
"It's much better if the hours of work are expressed clearly in the employment agreement so [people] know where they stand.
"A lot of workers are unsure, so they tend to work extra hours without pay."
