Over half of Hong Kong's workers put in more than 44 hours a week

More than half of the local labour force work more than 44 hours a week, a survey has found.

In particular, nearly one in five respondents put in more than 52 hours at work each week.

The findings signalled a need for the city to introduce a law on working hours as soon as possible, a moderate pan-democratic political group said.

"Family disputes arise very easily in these cases because family members do not have much time to spend with one another," lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung, of the Neighbourhood and Workers Service Centre, said yesterday.

"The government always stresses the importance of harmonious family ties, but how can that happen when it is so slow in standardising working hours?"

The Labour Department defines standard working hours as the normal number of hours an employee should work on a regular basis, beyond which overtime wages are payable.

The centre wants working hours capped at 44 a week, with workers getting 1.5 times their normal wages for any extra time they put in. Bosses say a law may hurt competitiveness and worsen the labour shortage.