The First Part-TIME Economy in the World
Does it Work?
DAF had to close). 100,000 jobs in manufacturing, ten per cent of the total, were lost
between 1992 and 1994. Trade unions returned to wage moderation and working time
reduction as their dominant strategy. The centre-left government coalition, in power since
1989, stepped up its pressure to obtain wage restraint in order to slow down thedestruction
of jobs and the rise in social insurance costs. Unions complained that the massive job losses
occurred in spite of increased profits. At the same time, they talked employers into a new
central agreement with the promise of wage restraint if employers concede a new round of
working hours reduction. The government offered lower social charges to employers and tax
breaks to workers in order to brake the rise in non-wage labour costs and facilitate wage
restraint. With additional promises of the unions that they will support, through sectoral and
firm-level negotiations, a trade off between reduced working hours and more flexibility in
working hours, employers accept a compromise and in December 1993 a new central
agreement (‘A New Course’) was signed. This agreement continues the spirit of the
Wassenaar agreement of 1982 (Visser 1998). Wage moderation and improved profits are re-
affirmed as the basis for investment and employment creation. New is the focus on
flexibility, decentralisation, and a search for pragmatic solutions that support employment
growth and the transition to a high-employment dual earners economy.
Learning the lesson of the 1983-85 campaign, union leaders and employers develop a
pragmatic understanding of the exchange between shorter working hours, flexible working
time arrangements, wage moderation and employment creation. Trade-offs with maximum
employment effect are to be worked out in decentralised negotiations, taking account of
specific conditions that are bound to vary across sectors and firms. Employers give up their
blanket opposition against working-time reduction and unions accept that individual
solutions and choices may be more effective than collective measures, even from the point
of view of maximising the effect on job creation. A new round of working time reduction is
realised between 1994 and 1997. In this campaign working hours are reduced and the
average working week of full-time workers is now 37 hours. In fact, half of all full-time
employees now have a contractual working week of 36 hours, some work less hours, and
around 40 per cent works longer, up to a maximum of 45 hours (such long hours are only
found in transport). At the same time working hours are averaged over the week, month or
years, and fewer and fewer workers work according to a similar schedule.
The 1994-97 campaign for reduced working hours shows different trade-offs across sectors
and firms (Tijdens 1998). Generally, there is an exchange of shorter working hours for
increased working time flexibility in department stores, banking, insurance, railways, the
dairy and food industry, in chemicals, in printing and in railways. Increasingly working time
is annualised and a corridor of 32-40 hours per week is possible. Industrial unions introduce
the idea of ‘vari-time’ or working hours corridors and in services unions have begun to
negotiate collective agreements ‘à la carte’.
In the public sector the 36 hours week was presented as a means to keep employment levels
unchanged despite austerity. Where the employers refused to negotiate shorter hours
(Philips, metal-engineering), they have relied on the resistance of salaried staff (without
overtime compensation) against shorter hours. They have also conceded much higher pay
rises than elsewhere.
Summing up, annual working hours have continued to fall as part of a longer trend. In the
second half of the 1980s the reduction of working time of full-time workers came to a halt.
In recent years the largest contribution to the decline in average working hours has come
from the shift to part-time jobs. This is also true for the contribution to job sharing and job
creation. Between 1979 and 1996 the number of part-time jobs doubled and the incidence of
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