ACCORDING to a new finding by the EU statistics office, Eurostat, Slovak employees work an average of 41 hours per week - more than in most European Union countries - and spend 10 hours more in the workplace than Dutch employees, for example.
Eurostat claimed that populations in the post-socialist countries that entered the EU in 2004 work comparatively longer than in the EU15, the SME daily reported.
Economists attribute the longer working hours in Slovakia to the country's lower living standards and purchasing power compared to Western European states.
Martin Chren of the FA Hayek Foundation suggested that Slovaks will have to work harder if they wish to approach the Western standard of living.
He also noted that "labour productivity is still too low in Slovakia, having until recently grown faster than wages".
However, Ľubomír Čierny of the Confederation of Trades Union said the reasons for longer work were low wages rather than low labour productivity.
