From the WHO. The scary part about it is that 55hrs is the cut-off point before the risk goes up substantially. 55hrs was the average working week for lorry drivers in a study done a few years ago.
Working more than 55 hours a week in a paid job resulted in 745,000 deaths in 2016, the study estimated, up from 590,000 in 2000. About 398,000 of the deaths in 2016 were because of stroke and 347,000 because of heart disease. Both physiological stress responses and changes in behavior (such as an unhealthy diet, poor sleep and reduced physical activity) are “conceivable” reasons that long hours have a negative impact on health, the authors suggest.
Working more than 55 hours per week is dangerous. It is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of stroke and 17% higher risk of heart disease compared with working 35-40 hours per week.
Long hours are more dangerous than other occupational hazards. In all three years that the study examined (2000, 2010 and 2016), working long hours led to more disease than any other occupational risk factor, including exposure to carcinogens and the nonuse of seat belts at work. And the health toll of overwork worsened over time: From 2000 to 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease because of working long hours increased 42%, and from stroke 19%.
And yet we still have an industry full of people whining about not being able to max out their hours.
Yet the ones in the Health Service, Doctors, Nurses. Vets, Teachers, Police, even Government ministers are sleep deprived, overworked, pressurised to do more. I have added teachers because I have seen how much extra work my step daughter has to do at home. She is 22 and should be out clubbing, she leaves home at 6.45 and gets home at 18.00, by 20.30 she is in bed knackered, the 25 year old step son does 15 hour days as a health care worker. I am proud of their work ethic but don’t think it’s simply a lorry drivers problem.
Wheel Nut:
Yet the ones in the Health Service, Doctors, Nurses. Vets, Teachers, Police, even Government ministers are sleep deprived, overworked, pressurised to do more. I have added teachers because I have seen how much extra work my step daughter has to do at home. She is 22 and should be out clubbing, she leaves home at 6.45 and gets home at 18.00, by 20.30 she is in bed knackered, the 25 year old step son does 15 hour days as a health care worker. I am proud of their work ethic but don’t think it’s simply a lorry drivers problem.
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You raise a good point about the different professions. As drivers we do our hours and go home/sleep in cab - no extra work or stress once we clock off.
There are millions of people out of there who work in the office/classroom/hospital etc 9-5 but will then spend the entire evening at home working.
My Dad worked in Education for 25 years before retiring in 2012 and his job never stopped once home in the evenings and at weekends. He was so stressed by the end I was so relieved when he took early retirement.
Yeah agree. I gave up management because I got cheesed off with always being on duty, answering stuff on weekends etc etc. It’s just expected but without the added pay.
But then part of the issue is the whole mindset of work where its measured in terms of hours worked and not what has been achieved.
Wheel Nut:
I have added teachers because I have seen how much extra work my step daughter has to do at home. She is 22 and should be out clubbing, she leaves home at 6.45 and gets home at 18.00, by 20.30 she is in bed knackeredk
She’s not learned to do the time management of the job right yet then. My brother is also a teacher, has been for years. Because of the courses he teaches he basically has the entire school on his list of pupils. Took him a few years to get the time management sorted out and figuring he could re-use lesson plans but he manages to have enough time on weekends to do ultra-marathons, the type where he’ll run 150 miles in a weekend from say Lake District over to Whitby then down the coast to Bridlington, enough time to train during the week for them and he’s also run a couple of businesses as well whilst teaching full time.
Wheel Nut:
I have added teachers because I have seen how much extra work my step daughter has to do at home. She is 22 and should be out clubbing, she leaves home at 6.45 and gets home at 18.00, by 20.30 she is in bed knackeredk
She’s not learned to do the time management of the job right yet then. My brother is also a teacher, has been for years. Because of the courses he teaches he basically has the entire school on his list of pupils. Took him a few years to get the time management sorted out and figuring he could re-use lesson plans but he manages to have enough time on weekends to do ultra-marathons, the type where he’ll run 150 miles in a weekend from say Lake District over to Whitby then down the coast to Bridlington, enough time to train during the week for them and he’s also run a couple of businesses as well whilst teaching full time.
At 22 years old, no, she won’t have the same experience as your brother who has been doing teaching for many years. So she will be working long hours and find it draining.
Hardly astounding.
As time goes on, she will find it easier. That doesn’t mean the next few years won’t be very hard for her.
There are those teachers who recycle the same lessons year after year, opposed to those who continually reinvent material for each class they teach, and look closely at individual pupils.
.
Ed.
There is a vast difference between different types of teacher. A specialist teacher of a subject at a higher level where all the students are keen to learn, is not the same as trying to enthuse those who ate academically inclined, who don’t want to be there, who have poor parental support.
Truck drivers may work long hours but it doesn’t compare to standing up in front of a class and talking all day, plus we have laws to protect us, whereas white-collar jobs are more insidious.
On the other hand, I’ve got several teachers in my immediate family, as well as my ex-wife and some of her family. Several of them are quite simply their own worst enemies; making hard work of the simplest of tasks & not setting limits on how much work-time encroaches on personal-time.
My ex and her sister in particular seemed to validate their entire existence based on how much work they have to do and how much stress they were under, spend half of their time complaining about workload and stress while entirely ignoring the most basic time and stress management practices. My ex especially gives all her time to “her career” late into the evening while the kids are left to play on electronics with little supervision while they are with her.
Meanwhile my son’s secondary school finish at 14:45 every day and use a variety of different online sources to assign homework, which is automatically marked by the software. I’m not impressed with their attitude to education, but I don’t imagine these guys are half as stressed as other teachers I know.
I forgot about Conor and his family, he has a masters degree in open brain surgery yet still drives a lorry on agency work, it’s amazing as he is the first living brain donor to be able to be Jack of all trades and master of none!
Meanwhile the 22 year old has done her degree at university, gained a national teaching qualification and done a year in a school whilst applying for jobs for the 21/22 term. She works longer hours and works harder than any lorry driver I know.