If you want to increase your chances of divorce, start working nights, evenings or weekends.
   A University of Montreal study just found that couples working these non-standard hours were twice as likely to separate as those working the standard nine to five.
   Statistics Canada data shows that in 1994, of all couples with children where both partners were working for pay, one out of five (20 per cent) were working combined hours of more than 90 per week. Is this a trend that we want to encourage? Is this good for families, for children?
   Offering to help families with a new "flexibility" and "adaptability," the Ontario Ministry of Labour proposes to average hours of work over a three-week period instead of sticking to the same hours each week.
   The government gives this example: "An employer needs an employee to work 13 hours a day for one week (Monday to Friday) to complete a special project. The employer and employee can agree on a shortened work schedule for the employee the next week."
   Will day-care centres help out by staying open longer, or elderly parents not mind if they don't get a visit that week? Let's hope the children won't need help with their homework, because the work day will be 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
   The Ontario government's proposals will encourage longer hours of work and there's plenty of evidence about what this means. Long hours of work lead to more accidents. Recent research in the U.S. discovered that lack of sleep was much like getting drunk in terms of loss of alertness and slow reaction time.
   Working more hours is also bad for your health. Last year a Statistics Canada study showed that workers who move to longer hours (over 41 per week) smoke more, drink more, put on weight and are more likely to get depressed than those who work 40 hours or less. All of this leads to serious health problems.
   To make longer hours easier to implement, employers will no longer have to apply for a permit to keep workers at their posts for more than 48 hours a week. There will still be a limit though workers could not be asked to work more than 60 hours in any one week.
   That's 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, or 12 hours every day for 5 days!
   Workers will still get two whole weeks of paid vacation each year. Except that they may not be "whole" any more. You or your boss could propose that you take your vacation one day at a time.
   Imagine the possibilities. Your boss says: "Tomorrow will be a slow day, how about you take one of your vacation days?" Or, you say, "I know things are busy, but I really need Friday off."
   The government would like us to believe that workers and employers will mutually agree to these arrangements but let's face reality.
   This legislation, the Employment Standards Act, applies largely to non-unionized workers.
Workers in unions will hardly be affected because their hours are set in their collective agreements and cannot be changed arbitrarily. This is because workers like to know their hours in advance in order to have a life, because weddings, parent-teacher interviews and coaching soccer are not flexible.
   Meanwhile workers in banks and stores and restaurants without unions will be left alone to negotiate their hours, overtime and vacation with the employer. The problem is, it's the employer that decides who stays, who goes, who gets promoted, and who gets the best shifts for being "co-operative."
   The government says that it wants "to bring Ontario's employment standards into the 21st century." Well great, and we have some suggestions.
   It's almost heretical these days to look to Europe instead of south of the border, but Italy and France have moved to a standard 35-hour week, and European countries offer five or six weeks' vacation a year.
   Closer to home, other than Ontario, only Alberta, Nova Scotia and PEI have a standard work week of more than 40 hours. We suggest modernizing Ontario by moving from the current 44-hour week to 40 hours, like most other provinces.
   How about three weeks' vacation after a year of service and four weeks after 10 years, as in Saskatchewan? Instead of time and a half pay for overtime, how about double time after 48 hours, as in British Columbia?
   Unions have been negotiating shorter hours of work for more than 100 years, when the standard working hours for everyone were 60 a week. Let's not turn the clock back by reducing the legislated standards and leaving non-unionized workers out on their own.

Brian Payne is the president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

This article first appeared in THE TORONTO STAR on Sunday, November 12, 2000. It appears here courtesy of the office of Brian Payne.