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9-to-5 workday fading away in Australia

SYDNEY, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- The 9-to-5 workday with overtime is fading fast in Australia, experts say.

New National Employment Standards, which take effect in January, reflect a continuing shift in labor culture that took hold even before the economic downturn.

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The 38-hour workweek has become a thing of the past, and now, overtime may take a big hit too, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The NES now allows an employer to request an employee work more than 38 hours a week if the hours are "reasonable."

What constitutes reasonable, however, remains largely unanswered, said Brigid Van Wanrooy of the University of Sydney's Workplace Research Center.

''It is quite ambiguous about what is 'reasonable' -- it doesn't really give employees a solid basis to refuse to work," she said.

The real average working week in Australia has crept up to 44 hours over the past decade, Wanrooy said.

She says the U.N.'s International Labor Organization warns that when people work more than 50 hours a week, "it starts to get harmful to your health.''

The new workplace law missed an opportunity to set an upper limit for hours, Van Wanrooy said.

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''The 9-to-5 working day doesn't exist for many Australians, yet many people report a preference for a standard working week,'' she said.

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