Search

Chapter 4 of the book "Decent Working Time: New Trends, New Issues," edited by Jean-Yves Boulin, Michel Lallement, Jon C. Messenger, and François Michon is presented. It discusses the consideration of life-course perspective in the working time especially for women employees who are mixing work and child rearing or education. The emergence of life course policies in Europe, and gender differences in working time preference in Great Britain and Germany are also discussed.

This chapter examines the employment condition of part-timers in Australia and New Zealand. Part-time workers are concentrated in a limited range of occupations. In Australia in 1993, cleaners had the highest proportion of people working part-time. This was followed by miscellaneous salespersons with 60 percent, tellers, cashiers and ticket salespersons with 59 percent and sales assistants with 51 percent. The same pattern is evident in New Zealand with the majority of part-time workers concentrated in clerical, cleaning, and cooking occupations. These patterns reinforce the view that part-time work tends to be concentrated in lower-paid jobs with fewer opportunities for training, skills development and promotion. A characteristic of part-time employment in Australia and New Zealand is the lack of award coverage and employment benefits. The percentage of full-time employees in Australia receiving employment benefits far outweighs those in the part-time workforce. There are significant differences here between those employed on a casual basis, the majority of whom are women, and those employed on a permanent part-time basis, with the latter usually receiving the same benefits and award coverage as full-time workers.

This chapter compares the condition of part-time workers in Japan and South Korea. Part-timers in South Korea tend to be concentrated in small firms, whereas in Japan, they are more likely to work for larger organizations. Over half of the part-timers in South Korea work in firms employing fewer than five people, compared with only 13.7 percent of Japanese part-timers. Very few part-timers in South Korea are employed in large corporations with 1,000 or more employees, compared with 16.8 percent in Japan. Part-timers in Japan are more likely to work for medium-sized to large firms, compared with 28.8 percent in South Korea. This distribution may in fact reflect the industrial composition of firms in each country, but it also shows that part-time workers in South Korea are more likely to be found in small firms. More than half of the Japanese firms hire part-timers, compared with less than 20 percent of South Korean firms. The use of part-time work was more common in non-manufacturing companies in each country. Using part-timers as a temporary measure to meet fluctuating demand was important, especially in Japan where employers were more likely to say they used part-timers to reduce personnel costs.

This chapter examines the nature of part-time work in the U.S. and Japan. The increase in part-time employment in the U.S. may be attributed to the growth in involuntary part-time employment. Japanese employers have always followed a core-peripheral model of employment, using part-time and temporary workers to increase employment and labor cost flexibility. Japanese employers have reduced the share of regular workers and increased the share of part-time workers in order to lower labor costs and buffer core workers from demand fluctuations. Debate in the U.S. over part-time work has been largely subsumed in a more general debate over the quality of jobs. Although the U.S. has experienced healthy job growth and relatively low unemployment, there is widespread concern that the quality of jobs in terms of wages, benefits and job security has declined. Part-time work is typically associated with low-quality jobs. There is lack of debate over part-time employment in Japan despite rapid growth in the country. The lower status and buffer role played by the predominantly female part-time workforce in the Japanese economy reinforces rigid gender roles in a society in which men are seen as the primary breadwinners of the family and women as the homemakers.

This chapter examines how societal effect shapes the use of part-time work in France, Great Britain and Sweden. In these countries, the wage gap between men and women has narrowed considerably, so that women in employment can expect to earn more than they used to. This is particularly true of Sweden where the wage solidarity policy is one of the principles underpinning the Swedish model that has led to a general narrowing of the wage gap to the point where average female pay is now about 80 percent of that of men. In France, a sustained policy of increasing low wages, combined with rising skill levels among women, has reduced the pay gap between men and women to the point where average female pay was 79 percent of that of men in 1992. In Britain, pay discrimination remains very strong wherein women's hourly earnings have reached 80 percent of those of men among manual workers and 58 percent among non-manual workers. In terms of child care, 58 percent of Swedish preschool children are cared for outside their home. In France, child care is made easy for families since there are free nursery schools available to all children from the age of 3 and sometimes even earlier, with compulsory primary school starting at the age of 6.

This chapter examines why Portugal and Spain have low levels of part-time work. Women dominate part-time employment in both countries as they do in the rest of Europe. However, the part-time employment rates for women in Portugal and in Spain are much lower than in the European Union as a whole. In all countries, the majority of part-timers is employed in the service sector. However, there are marked differences between countries. In Portugal, the share of part-timers in services is 50 percent, compared with 81 percent in Spain. The agricultural sector accounts for 34 percent of all part-time employment in Portugal. This is a characteristic of part-time employment that is specific to Portugal. Unlike in many other European countries, the part-time employment rate in Portugal is highest in agriculture, whereas in Spain, it is highest in the service sector. The hours usually worked by part-timers are higher than the European average in Portugal. In this respect, part-time work in Portugal is somewhat different from the rest of Europe, with a much higher share of all part-timers working long hours. 17.4 percent of all part-timers in Portugal usually work 31 hours per week or more, compared with only 1.2 percent in Spain and a European average of 9.8 percent.

This chapter presents an explanatory theoretical approach for cross-national differences in the share of women working part-time in West Germany, Finland and the Netherlands. The theoretical approach used is based on three basic concept, which are gender culture, the gender order and gender arrangements. The concept of gender culture refers to common assumptions about the desirable, normal form of gender relations and the division of labor between women and men. Gender order refers to the structure of gender relationships and the relations between different societal institutions. Gender arrangement refers to the generally binding forms resulting from negotiations between actors relating to the gender culture and institutions within the gender order. In the Netherlands, a social democrat welfare state and a fairly unified feminist movement integrated into the decision-making process of the welfare state, promoted new patterns of employment orientation in favor of part-time work in the phases of active motherhood. In West Germany, a more corporatist-conservative welfare regime and a divided protest feminist movement has not integrated itself into welfare state institutions, with the consequences that part-time work is less well developed and less well protected.

This chapter assesses the effect of part-time employment on pensions. Such effect varies among countries and over time due to differences in the political forces shaping pension systems and the labor market. The balance between public and private pension provision and the redistributional structure of state schemes mediate the effect of part-time employment. It has been suggested that welfare states shaped by labor movements with redistributive, egalitarian aims are more woman-friendly in their provisions. Part-time work can lead to lower pension income in two main ways. First, periods of part-time work reduce the lifetime earnings on which pensions depend. British women often leave or change their job when family responsibilities cannot be combined with full-time employment. Taking a part-time job following child-bearing usually entails occupational downgrading, affecting earnings well beyond the period of intensive child-rearing. Second, part-time employees are less likely to be eligible to contribute to pension schemes. In the social insurance schemes of five European Union states, contributions from those earning below a threshold are not allowed, while occupational schemes often do not admit part-time employees.

This chapter explores the nature of part-time work as a form of deviance from the standard full-time employment relationship. The establishment of the standard working week was central to the evolution of the modern employment system. Spot contracting, where labor is hired for a specific task and contracts have to be continuously renegotiated, has been shown in labor market theory to be an inefficient form of labor market organization for a wide range of employment situations for both employer and employee. Yet without collective worker action and resistance, many more employers would have opted to retain the inefficient but low-risk forms of casual employment relationships. Commitment to regularize and incorporate part-time work into standard terms and conditions is critical to the protection of both full- and part-time workers. This commitment needs extension to include social protection where this is still linked to full-time participation. Even under pro rata conditions part-time workers will suffer financial penalties which go beyond the shortfall in weekly income. Part-timers are less likely to be promoted and thus enjoy less favorable lifetime earnings prospects, and part-time jobs still tend to be created in sectors.