Unpaid Overtime in Austria Hits €2.5 Billion as Labour Groups Push for Shorter Working Week
Published on 09/09/2026 at 21:21 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Austrian employees clocked 45.9 million hours of overtime and extra work in 2025 without receiving a single euro in compensation — a collective loss of €2.5 billion in wages that has now become the rallying point for the country's most powerful labour organisations.
The Chamber of Labour (AK) and the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB) seized on those figures on 8 September 2026 to demand a fundamental overhaul of how working time is structured in the Alpine republic. Their central target: the 40-hour week, which they argue has outlived its usefulness.
Full-time workers in Austria currently average 40.7 hours per week, placing the country at the top of the EU rankings for time spent on the job. The unions want a general reduction in weekly hours with full wage compensation, the scrapping of the 12-hour working day, and pilot programmes testing a four-day week.
AK President Anderl pointed out that the standard 40-hour workweek has gone unchanged for half a century, even though productivity per hour worked has doubled since the 1970s. The political push, she said, mirrors what employees actually want: 80 percent of Austrian workers say they would prefer shorter hours.
The case for cutting working time rests on more than just fatigue. Labour representatives frame it as a matter of economic fairness, pointing to the vast sums of unpaid labour that flow from employers each year.
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Legal Wins Offer a Glimpse of What's Owed
The AK's legal aid work has thrown the scale of the problem into sharp relief. In one recent case, the AK in Carinthia secured a back-payment of €2,100 for a service-sector employee — money owed for years of undocumented overtime, including the legally required surcharges.
AK President Günther Goach used the case to urge workers to keep meticulous records of their own hours. Without documentation, he suggested, claims for unpaid work are far harder to pursue.
Employers Push Back With Their Own Numbers
Business representatives were quick to reject the proposals. Julian Fässler, director of the Vorarlberg Chamber of Commerce (WKV), dismissed the plans and cited statistics showing that actual working time in 2025 stood at just 29.4 hours per week — a figure that has actually declined since before the pandemic. His prescription runs in the opposite direction: boost productivity rather than shrink the total volume of work.
Karl Mayr, the entrepreneur behind the Fussl fashion chain, joined the opposition during a political debate. He argued for keeping — or returning to — the 40-hour week, pushing back against the 38.5-hour model common in many collective agreements. Mayr cited sharply rising costs as the reason: his company's wage bill has grown 40 percent since 2019. He also called for lower non-wage labour costs to protect competitiveness.
Pension Age Rise Compounds the Debate
The working-time discussion is unfolding alongside growing anger over the planned increase of the pension age to 67. The AK in Upper Austria and provincial governor Doskozil have both highlighted the grim reality facing older job seekers.
In July, 26,300 Austrians over the age of 60 were registered as unemployed. The situation is especially acute for 61-year-old women, whose unemployment rate jumped 356 percent — a figure representing nearly 3,000 individuals.
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State Aid Should Come With Strings, Unions Say
The ÖGB, which represents 1.2 million workers, is tying the working-time question to a broader industrial strategy for 2035. The federation wants government subsidies to be conditional on companies providing location guarantees, protecting jobs, meeting high labour standards, and investing in worker qualifications.
The demand effectively seeks to use public money as leverage for better working conditions — a move that would shift the balance of power in negotiations over hours, pay, and job security in the years ahead.
