Working Times Profiles of Hypermarket Workers

Abstract

Increasing liberalization of the sector, especially in opening hours with extended days and Sundays opening augmented working times in unsocial hours and irregular schedules with consequences for workers health and safety. This study aims at characterizing the profile of hypermarket workers based on working time in order to alert for the consequences of the unadjusted work time organization with respect to sleep, sleepiness, satisfaction and work-family conflict. It was based on a cross-sectional questionnaire applied between November 2016 and January 2017. The sample consisted of 289 workers (response rate of 70.3%). Our sample showed a majority of women (70.5%), a mean age of 38 years old, with 21.7% above the 45 years old. Most of the workers had a 40 h full-time working period (70.1%). The shifts’ organization is based mostly on different fixed shifts (77.8%). In the early morning and night shifts the median duration of hours of sleep was lower, with 5.5 h of sleep for those in shifts starting from 4:00 h to 5:00 h and 6 h for those in shifts starting from 6:00 h to 7:30 h or from 22:00 h to 24:00 h and the perception of adverse levels of work-family conflict was higher. For the night shift sleepiness was more frequent/very frequent (24.3%). Those starting working at 7–7:30 h and 22–24 h were the groups with higher frequency of dissatisfaction with working schedules.