Overwork damaging families, say unions

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

For many thousands of families like the Cuneens of Orewa, the working week has become a seven-day grind.

Warren Cuneen has his hours as a carpenter on the Britomart transport centre project in downtown Auckland relatively under control.

He toils from 7am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and makes a point of refusing weekend work because of his family commitments.

But his wife, Tippawan, works for eight hours on Saturday and Sunday nights as well as at least two nocturnal shifts during the week, cleaning and stocking shelves at a local supermarket.

When she has to go to work during the week, the former Thai small-business owner cooks an evening meal and farewells her 10-year-old son, Racha, before starting her shift at 4pm, two hours before her husband gets home.

By the time she returns after midnight, Mr Cuneen has usually been asleep for several hours, but is woken for a brief chat as she will be snoozing when it is his turn to leave for work at 5.30am to beat traffic jams.

Yesterday was the couple's second wedding anniversary, but there was scant chance to celebrate before Mrs Cuneen and her 20-year-old daughter, Kudapom, had to leave for work.

The Cuneens are matter-of-fact about their lot. They accept that work must come first so they can scrape together a deposit on their first house, hopefully by Christmas.

Mr Cuneen says: "It's just a matter of doing it and smiling about it or you go round the twist."

The Cuneens were one of 30 families interviewed for the Council of Trade Unions' "Get a Life" campaign, by which unions hope to restore balance to workers' lives through pay negotiations and pressure on legislators, such as a push for a minimum of four weeks' leave.

Although Labour says it will not force employers to pay for an extra week's holiday in its next term in office, the release today of the first report from the project is aimed at ramping up political pressure in this election week.

Both the Greens and the Alliance are promoting four weeks' leave, the Progressive Coalition wants a commission of inquiry into the balance between work and family life, and Act also wants an inquiry into this and other ways of strengthening the family unit.

CTU president Ross Wilson said the report showed many families were coming under severe pressure and he believed there was strong public support to regulate against excessive working hours as well as introducing family-friendly workplace policies.

"Achieving a balance between working life and private life is also necessary for the health of our society - long working hours deny people the opportunity to relate to family and friends and to contribute to community life."

One of the more worrying research findings was that almost three-quarters of those interviewed did not take regular breaks at work.

Many workers in the study complained about having to do unpaid work at the beginning or end of their shifts, in what the report described as "theft of time at the edges" by employers.

Others mentioned deliberate understaffing and the blurring by new technology of the division between work and home, as employers took advantage of cellphones and email to make more demands on their time.

Fewer than a third had any regular involvement in community activities, organised sports or social clubs.