Working-Time Policies in Switzerland : An Analysis of Desired Working Time, Overtime, and Hours Constraints of Swiss Salaried Employees

In this paper, desired working time, overtime, and hours constraints of Swiss salaried employees are analysed with data from the 1998 Swiss Labour Force Survey and with data from the 1997 International Social Survey Programme. It is shown that (i) most Swiss workers do not face hours constraints, when we compare the desired working time with the contractual working time; (ii) the largest portion of constrained workers would like to work less and earn less (17% of all male and 22% of all female salaried employees); (iii) there is a deficit of part-time jobs for both men and women, especially for high-qualified individuals; (iv) men and women work on average 3.15 and 1.69 hours overtime per week, respectively; the most common form of compensation for this overtime is holidays, followed by no compensation and money; (v) a comparison between actual and desired working time reveals that a significant amount of workers are constrained in the sense that they would prefer shorter actual working hours; (vi) an international comparison of desired working time shows that workers in Switzerland are quite satisfied with their current workload/pay combination; Switzerland does, however, have the highest portion of workers wanting to work and earn less. Some policy implications of these findings are also discussed.