Survey shows five-day work week in vogue

Taipei Times, Sunday 28 March 2004, Page 2

The five-day work week is now the norm, a Council of Labor Affairs survey has shown.

According to the survey, which was conducted in 2003, 38.2 percent of business said that they work five days a week with 28.5 percent saying they work six days a week. Another 7.1 percent said that they work five-and-a-half days per week.

According to the Labor Standards Law (勞動基準法), employees should not work more than eight hours a day and more than 84 hours a fortnight.

Labor unions can shuffle the working hours of members as long as the total number of hours worked does not exceed the fortnight maximum.

Workers who are not part of a union must conduct a meeting with their employers before adjustments can be made to working hours.

According to the labor council's calculations, about 50.9 percent of employees regularly work five days a week.

Some 20.6 percent of employees sometimes work on Saturdays and 15.7 of employees work six days a week.

In the survey, 10 percent of those surveyed in the industrial sector worked less than 10 hours of overtime a week with 6.4 percent of workers in the service sector working less than 10 hours of overtime a week.