Now that should help many Thais make sense of why they have been feeling so miserable about their work and life in general but couldn't put their finger on the exact cause of their unhappiness. This report should serve as an eye opener to ordinary citizens, captains of industry, social workers and government policy makers, and hopefully generate a rational debate on how to make things better for everyone in this society.

A country with almost half of its formal workforce condemned to poor working conditions and lousy quality of life is bad for everybody. Even the other half of Thai workers fortunate enough to enjoy relatively more decent working hours at 48 hours or lower should pay attention to the plight of their less fortunate counterparts. When as many as 15 million workers out of the total workforce of some 33 million languish in poor living standards with little hope of achieving a work-family balance, a lot of them are going to become depressed and do things that contribute to all sorts of social problems, including alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence and crime.

Think about children who grow up in households where either or both parents spend most of their waking hours at work and can hardly afford any quality time to spend with their offspring, and the extent of social problems could increase exponentially. Children who need nurturing and loving care from parents but who don't get it in their formative years become more susceptible to misbehaviour, lack of discipline and vices that can endanger themselves and society as a whole.

The ILO report says attempts to reduce hours in countries where people work excessive hours have been unsuccessful because workers need to work long hours simply to make ends meet. It also cites the widespread use of overtime by employers in an effort to increase output under conditions of low productivity. That is a pretty accurate depiction of the situation in Thailand.

Average working hours in the manufacturing sector worldwide range between 35 and 45 hours per week, but are much longer in a number of developing countries, including Thailand - the only country where the hours of work in manufacturing average more than 59 per week, the report says.

In the worst of all possible worlds, the working poor bear the brunt of the negative effects as they have to work excessive hours because they are paid less than the legal minimum wage.

According to the ILO report, shorter working hours can have positive benefits on workers' health and family lives, reduce accidents at the workplace and increase productivity.

The situation in Thailand cannot be improved unless enough people in this country begin to change their attitudes and realise that decent standards of work and living are among their basic human rights, which must be respected by their employers and the government.

Many people believe that the country is trapped in a vicious circle: as a country with a workforce that lacks international competitiveness, the minimum wage has to be kept low to compensate for low productivity, which in turn compels workers to work excessive hours just to make ends meet. But Thailand needs to shed such a fatalistic outlook and embark on a serious effort to upgrade its workforce through better basic education, continuing education, skills development and seeing to it that workers have access to retraining in case they need to switch industries.

All this will ensure that our workforce is flexible and capable of competing with other countries. Only then can we as a society expect to make the right to decent working conditions an achievable aspiration.