Participation in "Work and loneliness: Quality resting time for an improved mental health of workers"

On the 26th April 2023, DBYN was invited to participate in a European Parliament’s Breakfast Event titled: ‘Work and loneliness: Quality resting time for an improved mental health of workers.’ The Event organized by the European Sunday Alliance was co-moderated by the Members of its Steering Committee: the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CESI), The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) and The Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE).

The meeting hosted by MEP Miriam Lexmann was about how socially and economically speaking, we need framework conditions to avoid loneliness, and this is in everybody’s interest: affected workers, their families, the social communities, the employers, and their businesses. Loneliness, because we are human and social beings, keeps us from seeking social interaction. Most humans, even many of the most industrious ones, also want to have time to spend with family members, friends or peers, or collective social communities, which can include volunteering, worship, leisure, and sport. If we are lonely and feel we cannot connect to those people and communities that we want.
So, what follows from this?
According to the European Sunday Alliance, it means that we need to re-think how we rest from work. In our globalising and liberalising world of work, boundaries and definitions of working time and resting time are increasingly blurred, scattered and dispersed for more and more workers. The result is that different workers and family members may have time off work at different times of the day and different times of the week. It means that we need to make more efforts to synchronise free time – what labour economists call resting time. 

Sara Sechi & Simona Di Dio (DBI), Begoña Ros Gras (DBYN)