The First Part-TIME Economy in the World
Does it Work?
programs, based on subsidies, absorbs around 1-1,5% of total employment (van Cruchten
and de Vries 1997). Job pools usually involve skilled workers on standard open-ended
employment contracts. These workers have no specific job assignments but can be deployed
throughout the company or, in rare cases, even beyond the company. In some cases they
apply to a sector, as in the docks or in the biscuit industry. There the job pools are a sort of
(internal) temp agencies for workers whose jobs are or may soon become redundant. But
there are also forms of job pools that are designed to increase the mobility and
employability of permanent and skilled staff. In the latter case, typically, workers are
assigned to pools on a voluntary basis on the basis of extra pay. Current experiments with
job pools are still small but some large firms in metal engineering plan to put up to one-
quarter of their staff in a pool.
Another type of flexibility, finally, concerns pay. Variable and effort related pay never
constituted a major source of variation in earnings in the Netherlands. Around 80 per cent of
Dutch employees have their earnings and working time determined through collective
bargaining. Most collective agreements determine fixed pay levels based on task and
function levels, some experience and seniority rating, with relatively little scope for
individual or group related performance related rewards. Pay systems and assessment
methods are governed in consultation with the mandatory (employee only) works councils.
In recent years, pay flexibility has increased, though for the great majority of employees it
remains rare to vary pay with individual efforts or with the profitability of the firm. Unions
and their members are in general very reluctant to accept pay flexibility (van Rij 1995). My
hypothesis is that their acceptance of time flexibility exhausts the willingness to endorse pay
flexibility as well.
It is impossible to present data on all aspects of flexible employment over a longer time
period. There is still little statistical data on for instance the increase in the various forms of
functional flexibility, job pools, task rotation, teamwork, etcetera. With respect to external
and internal numerical flexibility, however, it is possible to make a comparison over the past
eight to ten years. In 1991 the Central Statistical Office, based on the labour force sample
survey, estimated that 10 per cent of all employees had a ‘flexible employment relations’ (7
per cent of males, 16 per cent of females). That estimate included very small jobs (of less
than 12 hours per week) (Bierens and Imbens 1992). Without these marginal part-time jobs
the estimate would be closer to 8 per cent and can be compared with the 10 per cent found
in the most recent sample survey (of 1997), or 12 per cent if the very small (<12 hours) part-
time jobs are included.
On the basis of the available data the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment estimates
the total volume of atypical employment or ‘flex work’ (as it is called in the Netherlands) at
919,000 jobs (rather contracts really) in 1996. This equals fifteen per cent of all jobs. That
does not include self-employment - if people working on own account who were previously
employees are added, as does the Institute for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises, the
percentage rises to 17,5 per cent. Self-employment has not risen as a percentage of total
employment but is more or less stable at 12 per cent (women 10%, men 13%). The number
of self-employed has risen in the past ten years with 150,000 to 757,000 people in 1997.
This includes a growing number of construction workers, hairdressers and beauty specialists
who may previously have been in dependent employment, in addition to the usual category
of free lance workers among journalists, artists and professionals.
The figures of the Ministry refer to jobs or contracts, not to persons (somebody may have
two jobs) or full-time equivalents (on average, flexible contracts involve half the hours of
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