The debate on working hours in Spain is again in the center of attention after the statements of Antonio Garamendi, president of the CEOE, in the Forbes Spain Economic Summitwho defended the culture of effort in response to proposals to reduce working hours. “Do you think Carlitos (Alcaraz) works 37 and a half hours a week? No. Is the culture of effort, to know what you lose and what do you want.”
The response of the representative of the main employer in Spain maintains the line of opposition to the proposal of Reduction of workday that Congress knocked down a few weeks ago. However, what caught the attention was Garamendi’s negative to openly declare if he worked more than 40 hours a week that the law marks.
Reactions to Garamendi’s statements. The comparison that Garamendi between Carlos Alcaraz, a professional tennis player, and the vast majority of the active population has unleashed reactions from both the Ministry of Labor and the unions. The second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, He has pointed out That Garamendi “with rampant machismo does not know what it is to work 40 hours a week”, ensuring that it will not “allow those who charge for 25 times the minimum wage give us lessons of the reduction of working hours.”
For his part, Pepe Álvarez, general secretary of UGT, has described Garamendi’s statements of “unfair, provocative, populist and surrealist”, and added that “never in our country the young people have worked so hard to reach the end of the month.”
Beyond the working day. Leaving aside the allegation for the culture of the effort of the majority employer representative in Spain about the culture of employees’ effortthe data From the Active Population Survey (EPA) show that employees in Spain, in addition to their ordinary working days, made a total of 7,009,800 overtime, which is an increase with respect to 6,935,300 of the same period of 2024.
Of those hours, 2,821,300 of hours a week were unpaid overtime. That is, the employees worked hours beyond your daybut their company did not pay them. According to a prepared report By CCOO in September 2024, with this surplus of extra hours they could have created up to 62,880 full -time jobs. Last year, about 419,000 employees dedicated an average of 6.3 hours a week to work without remuneration.
How long do bosses work? While the figures of the working day for employees are collected in Dozens of annual statisticsthere is no formal record of the hours dedicated by the bosses and owners. It is common that, when asked, they respond that their day is 24 hours and that they work “from sun to sun”.
However, independent studies indicate that effective work hours can be significantly lower than those received or declared by the leaders. According to an investigation of the London School of Economicsthe ceos who claim to work more than 55 hours per week, actually only dedicated about 35 hours to real professional taskswhile the rest of his time was distributed among personal activities, leisure, gym and institutional events.
What is working? The definition of what is work and what is not, It is perfectly defined in the different laws that regulate the working day and the duties of the workers. When any discrepancy arises, justice does not hesitate to draw that limit in detail between it What is working time and what does not.
However, these limits do not seem to apply with the same precision to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who direct their companies who, without hesitation of their zeal and sacrifice, are not governed by the same time controls and rules that its employees. This lack of control makes subjective valuations over time and effort that, objectively, could be considered effective work time.
The Turbojornadas of Elon Musk and 996. In Silicon Valley, the CEO’s tendency to present themselves as supermpleados capable of making 120 hours a week without flavor has its maximum representative in Elon Musk. Recently, other businessmen from Silicon Valley, Like Lucy Guohave begun to advocate for days of 80 to 100 hours a week under the called “996“(From nine in the morning to nine at night, six days per week) as a paradigm of the culture of effort. However, again, which is never specified How many of those hours are dedicated to productive tasks directly related to their work at the head of their companies.
We have an example in Elon Musk himself, which after demanding more than 80 hours signals (and free) to his employees in Doge, he had to see how Tesla investors asked him, at least, Spend 40 hours a week to exercise from CEO from Tesla to get it out of the crisis.
The work perception bias. According to An analysis made by him Bureau of Labor Statistics From the US, overestimation can reach up to 10% in the self -perception of time dedicated to labor tasks. This distortion affects both employees and managers, who, moved by the desire to impress or strengthen the culture of effort, may consider that they work much more than they really do.
In the Spanish context, this bias can aggravate the narrative raised by Garamendi and the Marathyan Day defendersbut concrete data from official sources and international studies indicate that the perception and reality of effective work hours They can be separated for several percentage points. The problem is that, as there is no Official registration of hours worked For bosses and owners, the doubt of whether their days really meets the standards they publicly defend for their templates.
In Xataka | NOr you need more hours in the day. All that is needed is to understand how the brain works to work better with less
Image | DVIDSFlickr (Emiliano García-Page)
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