Smulkaus Ir Vidutinio Verslo Kaimo VietovÄse
PROBLEMS OF REST TIME ORGANIZATION IN THE DISTRICT
MUNICIPALITY
Dalia Perkumienė, Stasė Navasaitienė
Lithuanian Agricultural University
Annotation
Every working person has a right to rest. There are various sorts of rest set in
order to regain the employee’s efficiency and health. The working person must know
the daily rest time that belongs to him (breaks for eating and resting), extra and
special breaks of the work day (shift) time, the continuous rest of 24 hours between
work days (shifts), the continuous week and annual (festivals and holidays) rest time
and try to use it as effectively, as possible.
The article analyses problems of rest time organization in the public sector.
Authors try to reveal and evaluate the specialities of the rest time organization and
foresee its improvement possibilities.
Key words: Rest time, rest time organization, public sector, employee.
Introduction
After Lithuania joined the EU the 93/104 EU direction "About certain aspects
of work time organization" became very important. This direction obligates the
countries to ensure that every employee had a right to the minimal continuous
everyday rest time and a right to the minimal continuous rest of 24 hours every 7
days, and longer work could be done only if the employee agrees with that himself.
Some employers have a wrong opinion that the more the employees works, the
more work is done. Contrarily, a person who uses his rest time for studies, sports,
various events and all kind of other activities, has conditions for his social, cultural;
improvement together with the progress of all the society. On the other hand, work
capacity of a well physically and mentally rested person improves very much, as well
as work quality. Moreover, the employee can take part in the life of the enterprise
more actively. (Tuzovaitė, 2000). A person's longevity, health and work capacity
depends a lot on his ability to have a proper and active rest.
The purpose of the research is to reveal and evaluate the specialities of the
rest time organization in the public sector, as well as to foresee its improvement
possibilities.
The object of the research – the organization of rest time in the public sector:
the example of Kaunas district municipality administration.
The methods of the research – monographic, analysis and generalisation of
scientific literature, analysis of legal deeds, descriptive, comparative, graphical
representation, questionnaire survey and statistic methods.
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Results
The right to rest is a constitutional right of every working person, which is set
by lots of legal deeds valid in Lithuania: international declarations and conventions,
labour laws of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania. Every working person
has a right to free time and rest, as well as a right to the annual holiday. (The
Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, 1992, 49 article).
Ever since Lithuania regained independence, a system of legal deeds is being
created, which guarantees the right for all the people to have proper, safe and healthy
work conditions, according to:
a) The regulations of the International Work Organization;
b) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declares the right for all
the people to have proper work conditions;
c) the rules of The European Union's Directives.
The LR Labour Code of the year 2003, coordinated with the directives of the
International Work Organization, and the EU and the Convention of Human rights
and main liberties.
There can be various definitions found in literature sources for the word rest
time. Rest time is a free time from work, finetuned by a collective or work agreement
(Labour Code 2003, 156 article).
Rest time - a period of time, during which the employee is free from work and
can use this time at his discretion (Dambrauskienė, et. al., 2004).
Rest time is a period of calendar time, when the employee does not have to
carry out his work functions, his actions are not controlled by the employer, and the
employee can use this time at his discretion (Čiočys, 2002).
Rest time is a period of time during which the employee, according to the valid
laws, labour, collective agreements and inside rules of the work, one does not have to
carry out the work functions. That is exactly the time when the actions of the
employee are not controlled by the employer, and the employee can use it at his
discretion: dedicate it to rest, solving business of everyday life, studying, taking
sports, entertainments and other business (Tuzovaitė, 2001).
The laws of the LR and other legal deeds that finetune work and rest time set
their duration and the basis. There is no possibility in the agreement of the employee
and the employer to work longer hours than it is set by the law. It would be possible
to offer the employee such a rest time, which would be according to the statute of the
EU direction 93/104/EC6, which tells us that every employee has a right to a rest
time set by laws, and can work longer only if he accepts that voluntarily. In this case,
giving a rest time according to the valid LR laws, coordinated with by the right of the
EU, should assure the employees capacity for work, health and good work quality.
Good combination of work and rest helps a person's organism to stay almost
inexhaustibly capable for work.
The variety of work and rest time is projected according to the dynamics of
work capability, the main aim of which is to reduce the time of accustomancy to one's
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work and work capacity reducing time (Martinkus, 2000).
The involvement to work can be improved by doing introductory exercise of 5–
7 minutes. In order to make the big capacity work time longer, breaks can be done,
which might take a few seconds (micropauses), others may take a few or tens of
minutes. It depends on the type of the work process. Micropauses are breaks between
the operations and work actions. Other breaks may be strictly finetuned.
Structurally all the rest time might be divided into daily, weekly and annual
rest.
The employer must assure that the employees have a possibility to use the rest
breaks, but also he cannot force them to rest.
The length of the breaks given to the employees for eating and resting must not
be shorter than 30 minutes and not longer than 2 hours. This break is given after a
half of the day (shift) time has passed, but also not later than after 4 hours of work. It
is not included to the work time.
The employee may use this time at his discretion: for resting, eating, doing
everyday life business, studying, taking sports etc. According to the 158 article of the
Labour Code, the employee is allowed to leave his work place during the breaks for
resting and eating. The employer must make sure that the employee has proper
conditions for resting and eating.
According to the Labour Code of the year 2003, employees might work without
breaks for resting and eating during a six-day work week, during the rest days and
holidays eves, but only in that case if the work does not last longer than 6 hours. If a
employee is not able to leave his work place and has this break because of the
production or the other conditions, he must have a possibility to eat during work.
The beginning and the end of the break for resting and eating is set according to
the work rules, timetable and the collective work agreement (Labour Code, 2003, 258
articles).
According to the work conditions, the employees can have extra and special
breaks for resting during the work time.
For the employees of organizations, or for those of other structures, whose
activity is important in the way that they must continue the work or supply the
services for the inhabitants (city transport, health care institutions, energy supply
institutions, theatres, museums etc.), extra and special breaks are given in this way:
during that time, the work of the employees, who are given the extra or special
breaks, is done by the other employees, who are able to do those works.
Extra and special breaks may be as well given when there has been an accident
at work or a natural calamity.
The most important thing, how the extra breaks differ from the special ones is
that during the rest breaks the employees are having rest in specially arranged rooms
(Tuzovaitė, 2000).
In the other European countries the work rest is finetuned similarity as in
Lithuania. According to the law, in Holland a workday cannot be longer than 8,5
hours and the length of the work week – 48 hours. A workweek consists of 5 days; 1
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rest day per week is obligatory (usually Sundays). Another day for example, Friday
or Saturday may be chosen because of religious believes. In Sweden, according to the
law, the length of a workday cannot be more than 44 hours, workday length - 8 hours.
Work length is usually shortened by labour agreements. According to the law,
Sunday is an obligatory rest day. Another half-day or whole-day rest is provided if
needed (usually Sunday). Breaks, that cannot be shorter than 10 minutes, but have to
be less than 2 hours; time for going to work and back home, are not counted to the
length of the work day. If the work of the institution stops for certain inner reasons,
employees must be paid for the forced disability to work (Davulis, 2004).
In Luxembourg the law provides a work day of 8 hours and a work week of 40
hours. A work day must not be over 10 hours. In special situations (in the case of
immediate work or an accident) it may be limited. A work day consists of 5
(sometimes 4) work days. When there are 4 workdays per week, the workday may be
lengthen up to 9-10 hours, but cannot be more than this limit. Usually, rest day is
Sunday. In France, the work week length is 35 hours and the workday cannot be more
than 10 hours (Respublika..., 1998).
In Estonia an employer is required to grant an employee a break for rest and
meals after four hours of work unless otherwise provided for in the collective
agreement. The duration of a break for rest and meals shall be between thirty minutes
and one hour (Working and Rest Time Act, 2002).
For the most part, employers in the U.S. are prohibited from scheduling a break
of more than one hour during the basic eight-hour workday. A lunch break may not
be extended for more than one hour by allowing an employee to take a paid rest
period prior to or immediately following the meal period. Although the federal
government has no specific requirements for break times, the Fair Labour Standards
Act states that if employers choose to provide employees with rest periods, they must
be paid. In addition, if employers grant employees a meal break, they, too, must be
paid, unless the break qualifies as a bona fide meal period (Gaudio, 2007).
In order to disclose the problems of the rest time organization of the employees
in district municipality we have chosen municipality of Kaunas region for the
research. Empirical research survey was performed in order to find out the ethical and
working culture problems of the employees of municipality of Kaunas region, when
the employees of the administration of the municipality were interviewed. The period
of the research March – May 2007.
After analyzing the data of empirical research, it is possible to state the fact that
56 per cent of the respondents are introduced with legal deeds, which finetune rest
time, 26 per cent are partly introduced with it and 18 per cent are not introduced with
such deeds.
According to 47 article of the Republic of Lithuania Labour Code 2003,
employees have the right to information and consulting about everything what is
connected with work relations, that is why an employer has to inform the employees
about various changes in legal setting, which are related with the rights of employees.
Therefore Kaunas district municipality administration employees were asked how
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often they are informed about the laws, which valid in Lithuania and finetune rest
time and about changes in them by their administration. According to the data of the
research we can state that 62 per cent of administration employees are introduced
with innovations of labour laws once a year and 38 per cent said that such
information is not presented to them. Such results let us think that information about
work and rest time regulation and organization for the employees in municipality
administration is satisfactory.
While analyzing the answers of the respondents about this, whether they are
satisfied the organization of rest time in their working place, distribution of the
answers of respondents is presented in the first picture.
50%
42% 45%
40%
Satisfied
30%
Partly/satisfied
20%
13%
No opinion
10%
0%
Fig. 1. Spread of the answers of the respondents of Kaunas district municipality
administration employees about rest time organization
Kaunas district municipality administration employees, who took part in
inquest and who were satisfied or partly satisfied about organization of rest time
pointed out such disadvantages: a very big workload, that is why they have to work
overtime (78 per cent of respondents pointed out this reason), employees can not
have their holiday in comfortable time (14 per cent of respondents indicated this
reason).
According to the laws of the Republic of Lithuania rest time, which belong to
employees, absolutely ensures capacity for work and health to less than half of all
respondents. These data are illustrated in the second picture.
75%
80%
Absolutely/ens
60%
ures
Partly/ensures
40%
17%
20%
8%
No opinion
0%
Fig. 2. Distribution of Kaunas district municipality administration
employees’ opinion about health and efficiency warranty
While trying to find out how Kaunas district municipality administration
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employees use their rights to rest time, they were asked about duration of their lunch
break. Answers to this question were the same – lunch break in Kaunas district
municipality administration lasts 45 minutes. Most municipality administration
employees, it is 71 per cent, are satisfies with duration of lunch break, while the
others 29 per cent would like to have longer break.
There was shown an interest whether municipality administration employees
make use of extra or special breaks and how often they do it. There were such results
after amending the collected data: 50 per cent of respondents make use of both types
of breaks, 21 per cent – only extra lunch breaks, and 5 per cent (mostly 18–25 years
old employees) do not make use of extra or special lunch breaks. The answers to the
question about the frequency of lunch breaks of employees, who make use of extra
and (or) special lunch breaks were the same – they have one break before dinner and
one after dinner.
As there is 5 day working week, employees have two free days – it is Saturday
and Sunday. There was shown an interest in question whether it is enough time to
have a rest during weekend, to concentrate all forces for the new working week. All
respondents indicated that they are satisfied with present rest time of all week.
Annual holiday are obligatory to each employee. After six month work in an
office there might be given 14 day holiday, after a year work in an enterprise a
employee gets annual holiday. Kaunas district municipality administration employees
were asked about how the time of annual holiday is defined. The given answers show
that the time of annual holiday for the municipality employees is allocated by their
agreement, considering legal regulations, which finetune holiday appointment. 46 per
cent of employees have various problems because of annual holiday: Because of
special work nature (when there turn up unforeseen works) employees have to put
aside their planned holiday, they are not allowed to go on holiday in comfortable
time, there is no preliminary timetable, and 54 per cent of employees have no
problems.
The majority of municipality employees would like to have a rest room. All
furniture and things in this room should create cosy, pleasant and safe environment,
there might predominate green, blue spot, white or grey colours, which would calm
and helped to relax. There employees could have a rest or eat during breaks, they
would feel comfortable and freely, could talk not about work.
Rather big part employees of this enterprise would like to relax and improve
their health in special rest and relaxation room. Here might be done curative
gymnastics, massage and other procedures, related with the improvement of the
capacity for work, also here should work medical officers, who could ensure
employees’ good feeling and health.
It is glad, that in the enterprise employees use even several types of holiday for
special purpose. After interrogating all employees, it became clear that in the
enterprise works women, who are planning to a give a birth to a baby and bring up
them, also people, who are still studying and others.
Festivals are held in a rather interesting way in Kaunas district municipality
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administration, pithily happily, that is why the organization of the festivals satisfies
needs of municipality employees absolutely.
That rest time was used in a better way, the direction of the municipality should
pay more attention to employees’ opinion about present organization of rest time,
also to creative offers how to improve rest time.
Labour hygiene has a very big influence to health protection and to increase of
capacity for work: the appropriate illumination of study and workdesk, comfort of
study and so on (Chairova, 1987). While equipping workplace, it is necessary to pay
attention to employees’ needs ad to create “humane’ work space. It helps to work
more rational and productive. Decreasing psychical and physical load there is sparing
employees’ health, that is why increases their efficiency and initiative.
If workplaces are equipped together with people, who will work there, if all
work plans are created together and also they might be changed, according to
employees’ request, there originates a psychological atmosphere, which is favourable
for work (Steiner, 1997).
Rather comfortable conditions may be created in small workplaces. Rationally
used space and shortest movement distance allows to exchange information faster.
Aesthetic screens of middle height, arrangements of plants and furniture, put in right
place helps to create an individual and functional environment.
Means for improvement of rest time organization is Kaunas district
municipality administration might be implemented by having enough financial
resources, by trying honestly to do one’s duties as well as it is possible, also by
creating safe, comfortable and employable environment, optimal work and rest time
conditions, when employees and direction of the enterprise work together.
Conclusions
1. As the right to rest is a constitutional right of each working person, and its
implementation is foresee by particular standard deeds, so an employer must provide
all necessary and comprehensive information for his employees about the laws of the
Republic of Lithuania, which finetune rest time and their changes and negotiate
comfortable conditions in workplace.
2. Kaunas district municipality administration direction pays too little
attention to conveyance or employees about the laws of the Republic of Lithuania,
which finetune rest time and their changes, that is why or employees have problems
with allocation and organization of rest time, they also are not satisfied about the
order of annual holiday designation.
3. Bigger part of Kaunas district municipality administration or employees
because of immoderate workload use only a part of the rest time, which belongs to
them. In such situation, an employer should start to assume measures to secure rest
time for or employees. Firstly, it would be necessary to find out why the employees
are not in time to cope with workload and after that to try to eliminate the problem. It
may be that or employees must work overtime because of imperfect qualification, a
lack of experience, and problems with health or whatever.
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4. The rest time organization in Kaunas district municipality administration is
satisfactory: the laws and acts, which finetune work and rest time are followed, but
rest time organization mostly depends on the attitude of the leader to working people,
to their health.
5. While taking care of the efficiency of rest time organization by his/her or
employees, each leader of an enterprise should also regard to the opinion of or an
employee about present order of rest time organization discuss their offers and wishes
how to improve rest time organization, as such offers might help to take more
reasoned decisions.
References
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2.
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Davulis, T. (2004). Darbo teisė: Europos Sąjunga ir Lietuva. – Vilnius: Teisinės
informacijos centras.
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Europos Sąjungos direktyva93/104/EC dėl tam tikrų darbo laiko organizavimo aspektų. –
<http://www.3.lrs.lt/cbin/eu/preps2?Condition1=10045&Condition2 [2007 02 25].
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Gaudio, B. (2007). Employee Rest Breaks: What's Required? – NFIB Legal Foundation.
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Kiekviena Europos šalis turi savo darbo įstatymus//Respublika – 1998.
10. LR Darbo Kodeksas. Vilnius, 2003.
11. LR Konstitucija. Piliečių piimta 1992 m.spalio 25 d. referendume. – Vilnius, 1996.
12. LR Vyriausybės 2003m. vasario 3 d.nutarimu Nr. 160 „Dėl papildomų ir specialiųjų
pertraukų, įskaitomų į darbo laiką, nustatymo tvarkos patvirtinimo“//Valstybės žinios. – 203, Nr. 14
– 559.
13. Martinkus, B. (2000). Darbo išteklių ekonomika ir valdymas įmonėse. – Kaunas.
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POILSIO LAIKO ORGANIZAVIMO PROBLEMOS RAJONO SAVIVALDYBĖJE
Dalia Perkumienė, Stasė Navasaitienė
Lietuvos žemės ūkio universitetas
Kiekvienas dirbantis žmogus turi teisę į poilsį. Darbuotojų darbingumui ir sveikatai atgauti
nustatomos įvairios poilsio rūšys. Darbuotojas turi žinoti jam priklausantį kasdienio (pertraukos
pavalgyti ir pailsėti, papildomų ir specialių pertraukų darbo dienos (pamainos) laiku, paros
nepertraukiamojo poilsio tarp darbo dienų (pamainų), savaitės nenutrūkstamojo ir kasmetinio
(švenčių dienų, atostogų) poilsio laiką bei stengtis jį kuo efektyviau panaudoti.
Rūpindamasis savo darbuotojų poilsio laiko organizavimo efektyvinimu, kiekvienos įstaigos
vadovas turėtų atsižvelgti ir į pačių darbuotojų nuomonę apie esamą poilsio laiko organizavimo
tvarką, apsvarstyti jų pasiūlymus ir pageidavimus, kaip pagerinti poilsio laiko organizavimą, nes
tokie pasiūlymai galėtų padėti imtis racionalesnių sprendimų.
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Siekdamos atskleisti ir įvertinti poilsio laiko organizavimo problemas, autorės atliko empirinį
tyrimą, apklausdamos Kauno rajono savivaldybės administracijos darbuotojus bei pasiūlė
darbuotojų poilsio laiko organizavimo gerinimo galimybes. Tyrimas buvo atliktas 2008 m. kovo–
gegužės mėnesiais.
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Document Outline
