It looks like the distinction between democracy and "not a democracy" is not neccesary. Except for Turkey and (maybe) Malaysia, all oher points would be decently grouped with the distribution of democracies. The difference in trend is probably explained by the lower amount of data and the difference in range of the axes.
Just to clarify for an international audience:
While Austria does have union membership under 40% of employees, it does have a system of collective bargaining agreements regulating minimum wages, working hours, some aspects of working conditions and similar things relating to labour contracts.
These are negotiated by interest groups for the employers and employees, the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Labour, in which membership is mandatory by law for both. The only exception are some specific professions which have their separate interests groups, like the Chamber of Physicians for all physicians, or the Chamber of lawyers for all lawyers, which represent the profession as a whole and have collective bargaining agreements negotiated internally.
Thus, unions bring less benefits than in other countries, as many tasks of a union are already shouldered by these Chambers.
In essence: Austria has very strong employee interest institutions (so much in fact, that the standard definition of a union can't keep up) and should for the purpose of this graph count towards strong unions.
Lol Vietnam having "strong unions" is a joke. By law everyone has to be a part of a union that is required to have linkages with the Party. So basically they have no power to independently organize labour and are tightly managed by HR. The amount of overlap of datapoints on low vs high unionization seems to suggest that it's probably not a good way to break up the data
Your conclusion is not supported by my data and models. Democracy and productivity explain 58% of working hours length. Adding unions bring the total explanation power to 64%, an increase of 6%. Sure, productivity is the main factor behind, but unions do seem to play an important role. Unions seem to be especially important to reduce working hours, in countries that are already rich and democratic. The most productive democracies without unions (USA, Israel, Switzerland) work 35 minutes longer every day between Monday - Friday, compared to the richest democracies with unions (Belgium, Sweden, Denmark). The reduction in the working week in the countries with unions, is approximately 7.7%.
well 30%, but yeah comparing that to the countries in red, that's actually not that high. I do wonder though how much the Arbeiterkammer has influenced union participation
OP had decided whether states are "democratic" based on their position in the varieties of democract index which measures indicators to assess how democratic a system is. India isnt an autocracy but it scores fairly low on a number of measures and has been trending down for a variety of reasons.
I wasn't implying it was good, I was just answering your question as to why India was not considered a democracy by OP. On that topic however, Indexes are an acceptable (and preferable) method in Political Science to answer questions like this. Autocratic and democratic systems are not very useful as categorical distinctions given that systems are fluid and can contain combinations of features. In this case using an Index offers a method to treat domstic political characteristics as continuous data, which allows OP to better compare states along an axis. OP has bigger issues with their approach than the fact they used an index to measure how democratic a state was.
I agree! Yet, I find that clarity is often appreciated by readers. I am confident in the results supported by my model and data, and I am not afraid telling you that.
The complete model, which predicts working hours in a country just by looking at the level of productivty, democracy and union density, has a R² value of 0.64. This makes me more confident that the results are real, and not just a statistical artifact.
This is making me realise that I should maybe just shut up about fields I don't know shit about xD I'm from analytical chem, so I'm used to R² being a bit higher (ideally, however science too often isn't an exact science)
Yea coming from chemistry and looking at social science you will be very surprised at the "low" R² values.
Youd probably consider anything below 0.9 not too good but here having a R² of 0.65 is pretty good indicator that there is some kind of correlation
Analytical chem, first thing that caught my eye were some of the data points way off the fit which if I had in my data I would probably consider remeasuring and proceeded to comment before thinking twice
I spot checked a few of these quickly. Hey, I didn't get the same numbers, but they are in the ballpark. Then I mentioned it to someone else, and confirmed people absolutely don't want to hear this. Complete denial. So, take my upvote for trying to convey a difficult message.
I think the graph tries to do too many things and it undermines the message. And it would be better to show a table of the values and calculation.
It’s based off of this:
https://www.v-dem.net/documents/43/v-dem_dr2024_lowres.pdf
I can’t copy and paste anything from the paper(at least lot on mobile), but they go into how they measure democracy and their health in respective countries around the world.
If this is the data you used, I think you messed up with El Salvador and Mexico. Their indices are 0.11 and 0.30, respectively. Also some of the others are a little below the cut off you indicated, 0.6.
Thanks for sharing. I haven’t read the paper, but sure, one may argue about the health of different democracies based on different metrics. Change the weights of different metrics - you will see a different answer. I don’t want to get into that. But using a certain metric to call a county undemocratic is not correct. India, for example, just held the largest democratic elections in the world and the voter turnout was significantly higher than what some so called “healthy democracies” can boast of. I can imagine similar arguments apply also for other countries on the list.
One could argue that the elections are very recent and may not have factored into the V-Dem findings, but it’s also notable that the 2022 attempt to push a controversial land reform legislation through parliament that Indian farmers protested had to be scrapped because dissent and civil disobedience were successful. The Prime Minister even gave a televised address to the nation admitting there might have been shortcomings. They had the mandate to push it through legally, but they had to walk it back because of the protests. That happens when democracy works.
Yes, agree completely! The fact that those protests succeeded and were socially supported was transformative in this age of demagoguery and misinformation. It’s an example to the whole world.
Seems ok since they say the criteria in the plot (whatever score < 0.6). As long as the criteria is stated then it doesn’t seem dishonest. I guess whatever score is used there will be some weird cases
https://freedomhouse.org/country/philippines/freedom-world/2022
It‘s a „partly free“ democracy, so calling it „not a democracy“ is wrong it would be more like „flawed democracy“
Democracy and productivity explain 58% of working hours length. Adding unions bring the total explanation power to 64%, an increase of 6%. Sure, productivity is the main factor behind, but unions do seem to play an important role.
Unions seem to be especially important to reduce working hours, in countries that are already rich and democratic.
The most productive democracies without unions (USA, Israel, Switzerland) work 35 minutes longer every day between Monday - Friday, compared to the richest democracies with unions (Belgium, Sweden, Denmark). The reduction in the working week in the countries with unions, is approximately 7.7%.
When I went from college to working at a fortune 250 company, I was absolutely shocked by how much downtime there was. I spent twice the amount of time per week getting my degree than actually using it.
It doesn’t. Department of Labor splits between full-time and part-time.
Why is this surprising? The typical work day in the U.S. is 8 hours per day, 5 days a week.
I find your definition of "Strong" vs "Weak" union a bit lacking.
I can tell you that at last in Slovenia, Germany and Austria unions are quite powerful. Unions in those nations generally don't strike the company, but the government.
In Slovenia I know for sure there is a government institution \[Ekonomsko-Socialni Svet\] where Unions, Employers and the Government need to regularly address issues, discuss minimum wages, benefits, taxes, working hours, holidays etc. Often it leads to contracts between all 3 spanning several fields at once so none dares to break just one issue.
Being part of the union or not does not change much in this regard.
Modhi didn't get a ruling majority, his party lost 63 seats, Karge picked up 112 seats. His party's popularity party is losing favour. He is still leader of an alliance with other parties so it's increasingly influenced by other parties. 600 odd million votes and almost 50% we're women. That's more than 'theory'. One could argue that the USA is technically not a democracy because not all the population votes so the whole population is not represented. And minority rights in the USA are constant sore points too.
I'm in a strong union and I work 50 to 60 hours a week. That said, I'm also getting 10 to 20 hours of OT a week.
The OT is optional. Anything over 8 is OT, even if I only work one day that week.
I work long hours to hit my financial goals not because I am forced to.
Made with Rstudio.
Source for mean hours actually worked per week: [https://rshiny.ilo.org/dataexplorer57/?lang=en&id=HOW\_XEES\_SEX\_ECO\_EST\_NB\_Q](https://rshiny.ilo.org/dataexplorer57/?lang=en&id=HOW_XEES_SEX_ECO_EST_NB_Q)
Source for the Electoral Democracy Index: [https://ourworldindata.org/vdem-electoral-democracy-data](https://ourworldindata.org/vdem-electoral-democracy-data)
Source for GDP per worker: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_GDP\_(PPP)\_per\_person\_employed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_person_employed)
I’m curious about this plot and I wondered:
1) What is the data source for the strength of the unions?
2) Why was Japan omitted? It has a pretty high electoral democracy index (>0.8) but the work culture there greatly influences how many hours on average people work.
3) What about Australia and New Zealand?
Yup!
And overall I feel grouping by the V-Dem index is not particularly meaningful, and if I knew more about where OP sourced the data on the unions I would seek to question how they chose a blanket membership status metric that makes that strong/weak categorization relevant or robust.
1. Democracy and productivity explain 58% of working hours length. Adding unions bring the total explanation power to 64%, an increase of 6%. Sure, productivity is the main factor behind, but unions do seem to play an important role. Unions seem to be especially important to reduce working hours, in countries that are already rich and democratic. The most productive democracies without unions (USA, Israel, Switzerland) work 35 minutes longer every day between Monday - Friday, compared to the richest democracies with unions (Belgium, Sweden, Denmark). The reduction in the working week in the countries with unions, is approximately 7.7%.
2. Japan does not publish data on working hours, unfortunately.
3. Australia and New Zealand also do not publish data on working hours.
Where did you get the data on unions and how did you measure the strength or weakness of a union? You have cited sources for the other variables in your plots, so I’m wondering about this one.
I took the avarage of the democracy score between 2013 and 2019, for robustness, and with the assumption that democracy takes time to have an effect on the labor market.
Looking at the source for hours worked, some of the countries you have plotted (e.g. Italy, the United States) aren't in that dataset. Is it definitely the right link?
I am wondering why South Africa doesn't have strong unions, as they are literally part of the ruling party. Possibly because unemployment is high.. but unions pretty much control all of our work hours.
Compulsory unionization does not count, according to ILO. Only voluntary, worker-run, unions do. If it was the reverse, China would have the most powerful unions in the world, which is clearly not the case.
Four huge data points are missing: Sick time and Vacation time for both Union and non-union.
When I worked in Switzerland I had 6-8 weeks a year for both Sick and Vacation.
Compulsory unionization does not count, according to ILO. Only voluntary, worker-run, unions do. If it was the reverse, China would have the most powerful unions in the world, which is clearly not the case.
When I joined a union, my wage increased by $5,000 CAD per year, and my dues were only $50 per paycheque, or $1,300 per year. And, to counteract the other usual anti-union rhetoric, I am easily twice as busy in the union job.
It looks like the distinction between democracy and "not a democracy" is not neccesary. Except for Turkey and (maybe) Malaysia, all oher points would be decently grouped with the distribution of democracies. The difference in trend is probably explained by the lower amount of data and the difference in range of the axes.
I'm sorry, is that a trend line you have constructed from two data points?
Technically, it's a perfect line of best fit.
r of 1 or bust!
China? Japan? UK? Australia? New Zealand? Egypt? Turkey?
Not a big deal, just the world's second, fourth and sixth largest economies
Turkey is far right on right graph. Didn’t look too deep for the others, but definitely some big names conspicuously missing
I wonder if you can get reliable information on China
No data available, unfortunately.
Just to clarify for an international audience: While Austria does have union membership under 40% of employees, it does have a system of collective bargaining agreements regulating minimum wages, working hours, some aspects of working conditions and similar things relating to labour contracts. These are negotiated by interest groups for the employers and employees, the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Labour, in which membership is mandatory by law for both. The only exception are some specific professions which have their separate interests groups, like the Chamber of Physicians for all physicians, or the Chamber of lawyers for all lawyers, which represent the profession as a whole and have collective bargaining agreements negotiated internally. Thus, unions bring less benefits than in other countries, as many tasks of a union are already shouldered by these Chambers.
In essence: Austria has very strong employee interest institutions (so much in fact, that the standard definition of a union can't keep up) and should for the purpose of this graph count towards strong unions.
Interesting point!
Lol Vietnam having "strong unions" is a joke. By law everyone has to be a part of a union that is required to have linkages with the Party. So basically they have no power to independently organize labour and are tightly managed by HR. The amount of overlap of datapoints on low vs high unionization seems to suggest that it's probably not a good way to break up the data
Huh, so unions aren't a significant benefit to working hours. I always suspected as much.
Your conclusion is not supported by my data and models. Democracy and productivity explain 58% of working hours length. Adding unions bring the total explanation power to 64%, an increase of 6%. Sure, productivity is the main factor behind, but unions do seem to play an important role. Unions seem to be especially important to reduce working hours, in countries that are already rich and democratic. The most productive democracies without unions (USA, Israel, Switzerland) work 35 minutes longer every day between Monday - Friday, compared to the richest democracies with unions (Belgium, Sweden, Denmark). The reduction in the working week in the countries with unions, is approximately 7.7%.
What's the criteria for "strong unions"? Seems weird to me that Austria doesn't meet the qualifications
While we do have KV, not that many people are actually MEMBERS of a union. It‘s not necessary to be in most cases.
well 30%, but yeah comparing that to the countries in red, that's actually not that high. I do wonder though how much the Arbeiterkammer has influenced union participation
The regulation with KV and the following un necessity of being part of a union means that Austria is pretty much not comparable with most countries
Why mean and not median? India not a democracy? Thats definitely weird
OP had decided whether states are "democratic" based on their position in the varieties of democract index which measures indicators to assess how democratic a system is. India isnt an autocracy but it scores fairly low on a number of measures and has been trending down for a variety of reasons.
Having a methodology doesnt mean its a good methodology.
I wasn't implying it was good, I was just answering your question as to why India was not considered a democracy by OP. On that topic however, Indexes are an acceptable (and preferable) method in Political Science to answer questions like this. Autocratic and democratic systems are not very useful as categorical distinctions given that systems are fluid and can contain combinations of features. In this case using an Index offers a method to treat domstic political characteristics as continuous data, which allows OP to better compare states along an axis. OP has bigger issues with their approach than the fact they used an index to measure how democratic a state was.
And the Philippines? This data is bananas
I read this as “how long do toilets work per week” which sent me through many emotions.
Putting a conclusion in the subtitle rubs me the wrong way. Let the data answer the question.
I agree! Yet, I find that clarity is often appreciated by readers. I am confident in the results supported by my model and data, and I am not afraid telling you that.
You agree but you don't? Are you in sales/marketing? hah
Those R² values sure aren't beautiful
The data aren't suitable for linear regression in the first place. So the poor R\^2 is the least worry.
The complete model, which predicts working hours in a country just by looking at the level of productivty, democracy and union density, has a R² value of 0.64. This makes me more confident that the results are real, and not just a statistical artifact.
This is making me realise that I should maybe just shut up about fields I don't know shit about xD I'm from analytical chem, so I'm used to R² being a bit higher (ideally, however science too often isn't an exact science)
Yea coming from chemistry and looking at social science you will be very surprised at the "low" R² values. Youd probably consider anything below 0.9 not too good but here having a R² of 0.65 is pretty good indicator that there is some kind of correlation
> “however science too often isn’t an exact science” haha i like that line 😂
And how are your predictions metrics? Mse?
Bro what do you expect from social economic relationships? 0.99??
Yeah I've now realized I'm VERY out of my field here... I'm used to fits looking a bit nicer
What is your field lol the democracy side is frankly completely linear
Analytical chem, first thing that caught my eye were some of the data points way off the fit which if I had in my data I would probably consider remeasuring and proceeded to comment before thinking twice
I spot checked a few of these quickly. Hey, I didn't get the same numbers, but they are in the ballpark. Then I mentioned it to someone else, and confirmed people absolutely don't want to hear this. Complete denial. So, take my upvote for trying to convey a difficult message. I think the graph tries to do too many things and it undermines the message. And it would be better to show a table of the values and calculation.
India is “not a democracy”? That’s a joke.
It’s based off of this: https://www.v-dem.net/documents/43/v-dem_dr2024_lowres.pdf I can’t copy and paste anything from the paper(at least lot on mobile), but they go into how they measure democracy and their health in respective countries around the world.
If this is the data you used, I think you messed up with El Salvador and Mexico. Their indices are 0.11 and 0.30, respectively. Also some of the others are a little below the cut off you indicated, 0.6.
I’m not the OP.
Oh sorry.
Thanks for sharing. I haven’t read the paper, but sure, one may argue about the health of different democracies based on different metrics. Change the weights of different metrics - you will see a different answer. I don’t want to get into that. But using a certain metric to call a county undemocratic is not correct. India, for example, just held the largest democratic elections in the world and the voter turnout was significantly higher than what some so called “healthy democracies” can boast of. I can imagine similar arguments apply also for other countries on the list.
One could argue that the elections are very recent and may not have factored into the V-Dem findings, but it’s also notable that the 2022 attempt to push a controversial land reform legislation through parliament that Indian farmers protested had to be scrapped because dissent and civil disobedience were successful. The Prime Minister even gave a televised address to the nation admitting there might have been shortcomings. They had the mandate to push it through legally, but they had to walk it back because of the protests. That happens when democracy works.
To me, that is democracy in action :-). Imperfect by far, yes, but very much functional.
Yes, agree completely! The fact that those protests succeeded and were socially supported was transformative in this age of demagoguery and misinformation. It’s an example to the whole world.
Seems ok since they say the criteria in the plot (whatever score < 0.6). As long as the criteria is stated then it doesn’t seem dishonest. I guess whatever score is used there will be some weird cases
Pretty much every country holds "elections" but it takes more than that to actually be a democracy
India's actually a democracy, your opinion is irrelevant.
The India section of that report is such a joke
Don't like the party in power in a country? Declare them an autocracy.
Thought the same thing. Largest democracy in the world and they classify it as not a democracy. What a joke!
And the Philippines too? What a complete joke of statistics...
https://freedomhouse.org/country/philippines/freedom-world/2022 It‘s a „partly free“ democracy, so calling it „not a democracy“ is wrong it would be more like „flawed democracy“
So is this chart saying, regardless of union or democracy, that the countries with higher productivity have employees that work less hours?
Democracy and productivity explain 58% of working hours length. Adding unions bring the total explanation power to 64%, an increase of 6%. Sure, productivity is the main factor behind, but unions do seem to play an important role. Unions seem to be especially important to reduce working hours, in countries that are already rich and democratic. The most productive democracies without unions (USA, Israel, Switzerland) work 35 minutes longer every day between Monday - Friday, compared to the richest democracies with unions (Belgium, Sweden, Denmark). The reduction in the working week in the countries with unions, is approximately 7.7%.
Yes! However, workers are far from guaranteed less hours if they live in non-democeacies with weak unions.
Yo, your US hours are too small man. Theres no way it's under 40 right.....right?
When I went from college to working at a fortune 250 company, I was absolutely shocked by how much downtime there was. I spent twice the amount of time per week getting my degree than actually using it.
Apparently I am doing the wrong thing…
It’s a median of 38 hours for all full-time workers. This seems pretty realistic as well.
It could also take into account part time workers.
It doesn’t. Department of Labor splits between full-time and part-time. Why is this surprising? The typical work day in the U.S. is 8 hours per day, 5 days a week.
I just sit at my desk... but it looks like I'm working. I think during the week I do about 15 minutes of real actual work.
Needs equal axis for both plots
Ggplot? I feel like the country labels would have been better off not the same colour as the line
Maybe, yet it is crucial to distinguish between union and non-union countries.
I find your definition of "Strong" vs "Weak" union a bit lacking. I can tell you that at last in Slovenia, Germany and Austria unions are quite powerful. Unions in those nations generally don't strike the company, but the government. In Slovenia I know for sure there is a government institution \[Ekonomsko-Socialni Svet\] where Unions, Employers and the Government need to regularly address issues, discuss minimum wages, benefits, taxes, working hours, holidays etc. Often it leads to contracts between all 3 spanning several fields at once so none dares to break just one issue. Being part of the union or not does not change much in this regard.
Is anyone else struggling to read this?
Definitions of democracy are odd. India is a democracy.
Perhaps in theory, but it lacks strong checks and balances, and minority rights, according V-Dem.
Modhi didn't get a ruling majority, his party lost 63 seats, Karge picked up 112 seats. His party's popularity party is losing favour. He is still leader of an alliance with other parties so it's increasingly influenced by other parties. 600 odd million votes and almost 50% we're women. That's more than 'theory'. One could argue that the USA is technically not a democracy because not all the population votes so the whole population is not represented. And minority rights in the USA are constant sore points too.
Work smart, not hard. Here I am, not working hard.
V-Dem's Electoral Democracy Index is a joke. India is a democracy!
Perhaps in theory, but it lacks strong checks and balances, and minority rights, according V-Dem.
I'm in a strong union and I work 50 to 60 hours a week. That said, I'm also getting 10 to 20 hours of OT a week. The OT is optional. Anything over 8 is OT, even if I only work one day that week. I work long hours to hit my financial goals not because I am forced to.
If india is not democracy than wtf we are ?
Perhaps in theory, but it lacks strong checks and balances, and minority rights, according V-Dem.
Minority rights?tell me single right which majority have minority don't.
Made with Rstudio. Source for mean hours actually worked per week: [https://rshiny.ilo.org/dataexplorer57/?lang=en&id=HOW\_XEES\_SEX\_ECO\_EST\_NB\_Q](https://rshiny.ilo.org/dataexplorer57/?lang=en&id=HOW_XEES_SEX_ECO_EST_NB_Q) Source for the Electoral Democracy Index: [https://ourworldindata.org/vdem-electoral-democracy-data](https://ourworldindata.org/vdem-electoral-democracy-data) Source for GDP per worker: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_GDP\_(PPP)\_per\_person\_employed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_person_employed)
I’m curious about this plot and I wondered: 1) What is the data source for the strength of the unions? 2) Why was Japan omitted? It has a pretty high electoral democracy index (>0.8) but the work culture there greatly influences how many hours on average people work. 3) What about Australia and New Zealand?
Can't see UK either. Strange selection.
Yup! And overall I feel grouping by the V-Dem index is not particularly meaningful, and if I knew more about where OP sourced the data on the unions I would seek to question how they chose a blanket membership status metric that makes that strong/weak categorization relevant or robust.
The United Kingdom stopped publishing data on working hours after 2019, unfortunately.
1. Democracy and productivity explain 58% of working hours length. Adding unions bring the total explanation power to 64%, an increase of 6%. Sure, productivity is the main factor behind, but unions do seem to play an important role. Unions seem to be especially important to reduce working hours, in countries that are already rich and democratic. The most productive democracies without unions (USA, Israel, Switzerland) work 35 minutes longer every day between Monday - Friday, compared to the richest democracies with unions (Belgium, Sweden, Denmark). The reduction in the working week in the countries with unions, is approximately 7.7%. 2. Japan does not publish data on working hours, unfortunately. 3. Australia and New Zealand also do not publish data on working hours.
Where did you get the data on unions and how did you measure the strength or weakness of a union? You have cited sources for the other variables in your plots, so I’m wondering about this one.
It looks like El Salvador and Mexico are both below 0.60, but you put them in the “Democracy” table.
I took the avarage of the democracy score between 2013 and 2019, for robustness, and with the assumption that democracy takes time to have an effect on the labor market.
Looking at the source for hours worked, some of the countries you have plotted (e.g. Italy, the United States) aren't in that dataset. Is it definitely the right link?
I am wondering why South Africa doesn't have strong unions, as they are literally part of the ruling party. Possibly because unemployment is high.. but unions pretty much control all of our work hours.
Compulsory unionization does not count, according to ILO. Only voluntary, worker-run, unions do. If it was the reverse, China would have the most powerful unions in the world, which is clearly not the case.
Four huge data points are missing: Sick time and Vacation time for both Union and non-union. When I worked in Switzerland I had 6-8 weeks a year for both Sick and Vacation.
Sick time is not counted in the data. Vacation *is* counted, in the form of shorter working hours.
Brazil has compulsory unionization yet it is shown as weak unions... What is the treatment for features like this?
Compulsory unionization does not count, according to ILO. Only voluntary, worker-run, unions do. If it was the reverse, China would have the most powerful unions in the world, which is clearly not the case.
Damn Austria, y’all ever work? I mean shit. 👀
Now do just the tech sector…
And how much do they give up in union dues?
When I joined a union, my wage increased by $5,000 CAD per year, and my dues were only $50 per paycheque, or $1,300 per year. And, to counteract the other usual anti-union rhetoric, I am easily twice as busy in the union job.