In Bulgaria, 41% of workers say working time is not in line with family and social commitments. On average, for the EU this share is about 22%. This is due to the fact that the different forms of employment are not widely spread in Bulgaria. This is what Violeta Ivanova, chief economist at Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria (CITUB), said during a discussion forum organized with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

The Discussion Forum gathered unionists, experts from various confederations of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CITUBs), who discussed the total working time and the balance between working time and privacy.

Violeta Ivanova pointed out that precisely because of the lack of flexible forms of employment and the lack of the possibility of reconciling personal and family life in Bulgaria, the trend of those who fall out of the working life is preserved. She pointed out that the national statistics surveyed precisely this circle of people who say they want to work but who do not work for personal and family reasons.

In her words, according to statistics for 2010, they were 18 thousand.

"Now they are 20,000, thus, the trend remains," Ivanova said. She explained that all these unemployed people remain on social assistance, relying on lower pensions, and increasing poverty.

Ivanova also said that men are experiencing ever greater difficulties in reconciling working time and personal time, because women have so far been at the heart of European policies and the possibility of returning to work earlier.

In her words, the expectations for the new European directive on work-life balance between parents and carers are also in line with this.

In this regard, CITUB has proposals to increase paid parental leave by the age of ten, rather than the current eight, to create leave for urgent family reasons, to extend the family caretaker family and to introduce flexible work schedules at the request of the worker when it is necessary for family reasons.

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