Broadly speaking the working week at the Assembly is two and a half days.
When unions and management both lobbied for a longer working week, the government could not refuse.
And the Communists want Mr Prodi to emulate the French and enact a 35-hour working week.
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Greece's international lenders have suggested measures including increasing the maximum working week to six days.
They put in five or six fewer weeks per year, and three fewer hours per working week.
The plans, which will affect 2, 208 employees, include reducing the working week from 37 hours to 36-and-a-half hours.
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By contrast, the working week of part-timers has risen by about half an hour over the same period.
In France, the unions eventually won an agreement in 1981 to cut the working week to 39 hours.
We are paying extra money for what is essentially a basic working week.
Downing Street says Britain will use talks on the eurozone to try to limit EU curbs on the working week.
The company was forced to put 90 of its 210 staff on a four day working week to avoid temporary layoffs.
In July 1994, the authorities announced a reduction in the working week to 44 hours, to become effective the following January.
The UK's opt-out from the Working Time Directive only applies to the directive's clause setting a 48-hour limit on the working week.
In America, official studies tend to show women working more and men less, but the average working week has been fairly constant.
That would mean the current 35-hour working week remaining, as well as the amount of class contact time, set at 855 hours.
In France, Lionel Jospin's Socialist government is in the final stages of cutting the working week to 35 hours (see article).
Defence officials say 800, 000 civilian employees will have their working week reduced.
The OECD counts 22 member governments that subsidise a shorter working week.
Did a government that has produced a shorter working week, cut unemployment and produced livelier economic growth than Germany's simply become too complacent?
In addition, the European Working Time Directive will mean their working week is reduced to 58 hours by August, then 48 by 2007.
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Nurses are "drowning in a sea of paperwork" with more than one-sixth of the working week taken up doing non-essential paperwork, a survey suggests.
France has a 35-hour statutory working week, brought in by the Socialist Party in 2000, but critics say it is now stifling economic growth.
Workers tended to beaver away for the first few days of the working week in any case, before hitting a plateau and then slackening off.
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But the French also strongly believe that the state should ensure high wages for truckers, jobs for everyone and a 35-hour working week to boot.
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But the opt-out that we have now means you can only work longer hours if you choose to opt out of the 48-hour working week.
In March 1995 the authorities announced a five-day, 40-hour working week.
Someone working in Derby on the minimum wage for a full working week, will have seen their income tax bill cut in half under this government.
Workers in heavy industry, the core of Mr Bertinotti's support, might get a 35-hour working week and be exempted from the tougher rules on early retirement.
They also want wages in eastern Germany, currently only 86.5% of western levels despite a 90-minute-longer working week, brought into line with those in the west.
To the discomfort of Socialist-supporting teaching unions, Ms Royal has suggested that teachers should spend more of their already short working week actually in the classroom.
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