While in the third quarter of the last year employees in the EU worked 37 hours on average, an average work week in Serbia lasted 43.5 hours, which is the longest on the old continent.
Apart from Serbia, employees in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Poland also worked more than 40 hours. According to the Eurostat analysis, work week in Montenegro lasted 44 hours on average and 40.7 in North Macedonia.
CATUS Council Vice-President Duško Vuković explained that there was a tendency to minimize employees’ importance and efficiency. This shows that employers don’t really respect the laws of this country regarding not only regular, but also overtime work. He also added that every country should respect its workers and shouldn’t allow them to work longer than what is stipulated by law.
According to Mario Reljanović, legal expert from the Institute of Comparative Law, it is not uncommon that Serbian citizens work longer hours than in other countries, which proves that the salaries are quite low and people need to work a lot to earn decent living. People tend to do more than one job or work overtime on a job they already have. Although overtime work should be someting extraordinary, there is even a six-day work week, which more often becomes a rule.
In Serbia there are 500,000 to 600,000 unregistered working hours. Employers keep records, but reality is very often different from the one in the records because many people work longer hours than registered. Reljanović explains that in the majority of European countries working hours go from 35 to 38 and some are even thinking about introducing four-day work week.
There is regulation saying that anybody can work 130% of working hours, which is practically additional 52 hours per week, but it refers to work for multiple employers, not just one. One can work 40 hours a week for an employer and 30% more for another. It remains yet to be seen whether we are more productive than those who spend less time at work place.
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