Vienna. The crisis increases the pressure on workers in Austria. This is suggested by several current evaluations. A study by Sora on behalf of the Momentum Institute showed that during the first lockdown in the spring, 46 percent of families felt they were severely stressed. It is now 58 percent. The second lockdown thus became a greater burden for many parents than the first. For the study, 685 parents of children under the age of 15 were interviewed in November; the first part took place in April.
After the first lockdown, the parents returned to their workplaces and worked less in the home office. Both mothers and fathers reduced their working hours less in the second lockdown than in the first. And although schools and kindergartens were open, more than 70 percent of the children were cared for at home. Women in particular were increasingly relocating their work to off-peak times: “Every third woman surveyed worked early in the morning or in the evening, and every tenth even in the night, in spite of it Finding childcare time for gainful employment, ”says Barbara Blaha, director of the Momentum Institute.
A lot of stress even before the pandemic
But the increasing pressure in the world of work does not only affect families – and it is not only related to the corona crisis. Even before the pandemic, without any additional burdens such as homeschooling, working life was characterized by ever increasing time pressure. This is shown by an evaluation of the Statistics Austria survey on work organization and working time arrangements for 2019.
According to this, 41.5 percent of those in work regularly worked overtime in the previous year, 40.5 percent were often under time pressure – around a tenth (12.6 percent) even “always”. Only 18.1 percent never experienced stress. The industry with the highest proportion of employees who “always” worked under time pressure was accommodation and catering (18.2 percent). Employees in the areas of transport (17.9 percent), health and social services (17.4 percent), construction (13.6 percent) and trade (13.4 percent) were often under constant time pressure.
Even more hours were often on the agenda. 27.1 percent of those in employment were asked to start or end work “at least once a week”, and 14.4 percent were asked to do so “at least once a month”.
In the other direction, the flexibility is much less – to get one to two hours off at short notice was only very easy for a good third of the employed (36.7 percent) last year, while staying away spontaneously for a day or two for just under a quarter (24, 5 percent). Viewed in terms of activities, workers in auxiliary and semi-skilled activities found it particularly difficult to decouple themselves at short notice. In terms of sectors, this primarily affected education and training, transport, accommodation and gastronomy, as well as health and social services.
The latter area – specifically care professions – was the subject of another Sora survey, the results of which Health Minister Rudolf Anschober and Labor Minister Christine Aschbacher presented to journalists on Monday 68 percent even with their salary. In order to make the job more attractive, however, better training and qualification opportunities are needed, more occupational health promotion and more time for the people to be cared for.
Reform package for nursing professions
The latter coincides with the evaluation by Statistics Austria, which shows that the health and social services are under particularly high time pressure.
In order to make nursing professions more attractive and to support the current AMS “job offensive” in this area, a comprehensive reform package is to be put together by the end of January, announced Anschober and Aschbacher.
The need for this is acute: around 100,000 new nurses will be needed by 2030, Aschbacher calculated. And this is not only due to the increasing demand due to demographic development: of the currently around 127,000 employees in this area, more than 30 percent are over 50 years old, said Aschbacher. Many currently active nurses will therefore retire within the next ten years. (here / cka / APA)
