A number of private sector employees in Jeddah have called on relevant government agencies, including the Ministry of Labor, to reduce daily working hours.

Working hours often extend to 11 hours per day without overtime compensation, complained several employees while talking to Arab News.

Hassan Abdul Mattiy, a salesman at one of the food marketing companies in Jeddah, said that the nature of his work in the field of marketing calls for extra working hours beyond the official eight-hour workday.

Economists have expressed differing views on the issue; some stressed the need to reduce working hours in order to ensure employees’ productivity, while others emphasized the right of employers to demand certain hours of work from employees. Some others have expressed the importance of re-evaluating the topic, arguing that such a decision should take into account the different nature of work in each sector.

Mohammed Al-Swailem, an economist, said that reducing working hours in industrial establishments would have an impact on the production process, as working hours are tied to the production of specific quantities.

On the other hand, he said, reducing hours in the administrative sectors would have a positive effect on employees’ work performance because it would enable them to take a two-day weekend and increase productivity in the long-term.

A decision to reduce working hours would allow workers to spend more time with their families and attend to their own affairs, added Al-Swailem, and would reduce pressure on public transportation, electricity consumption and traffic congestion.

Economist Ali Jaafari said that many private companies in the Kingdom have already implemented the two-day weekend system, and have not registered declines in productivity.

A reduction in working hours, said Jaafari, will not adversely impact productivity in the private sector, but business owners protested against such a decision because they claimed that the salaries of employees are linked to the number of working hours they contribute.

Jaafari added that giving employees two days off per week is more important than reducing working hours.

Bashir Bakhit, another economist, said that each sector differs from the other in terms of working hours needed.

He pointed out that in the construction sector, laborers work eight hours during in the summer heat, which constitutes long working hours in harsh environmental conditions.

Meanwhile, reducing working hours is not applicable in the banking sector, because employees need to work longer hours to cover night shifts and match operation hours across global financial markets.

Bakhit argued that flexibility should be exercised in determining working hours depending on the nature of work in each sector. He lamented the lack of statistics, which could help experts compare the productivity of employees in the Kingdom to that of employees in other countries, stressing, that many factors must be examined to identify the relationship between the two factors.