The First Part-TIME Economy in the World
Does it Work?
more care facilities, or money, or they grant a request to work less hours. In many cases,
too, part-time employment became a part in their optimal staffing strategy.
In the 1990s part-time became embedded in the flexibility discussion and once unions
accepted ‘vari-time’ employers could not but concede improved rights for part-time
workers.
In the 1994-97 bargaining round over working time various pressures came together
(Tijdens 1998). In capital intensive industries employers are interested in longer operating
hours. Just-in-time production, reduction of stocks and traffic congestion push in the
direction of broadening the daily range of normal working hours (beginning earlier or
ending later) and a reduction of excess pay rates for evening or weekend hours. The concept
of ‘weekly average working hours’ now makes its full entrance. As a consequence, the
likelihood of ‘overtime’ with its higher pay rate is reduced, saving costs to employers. In
exchange, workers gain shorter working weeks, or additional hourly pay. It becomes also
easier to respond to shifting workloads. In many services and in retailing employers want a
better match of consumer behaviour (few peak hours, often in evenings or weekends, and
varying during the year) and working hours. Workers, on their part, seek more freedom in
determining when to start or end the working day (and avoid traffic peak hours, or get the
kids from school). Married women are interested in part-time jobs and some control over
when they work and fathers and mothers want extra time as well as more time control in
order to meet emergencies at home. More workers want to vary working time during the
year or during the life cycle, with extended breaks or the possibility to safe time for early
retirement. Union-conducted surveys if their members show that there is a considerable
support for increased flexibility in time-arrangements and collective agreements ‘à la carte’,
introducing choice for individual workers from a menu of possibilities in the collective
contract (van Rij 1995). In some contracts workers even have the right to ‘sell’ or ‘buy’
extra days-off; initially unions don’t believe their own surveys (which consistently show
that, on balance, more leisure will be bought than sold) and fear that most workers will go
for the money. So far, these fears have proved unfounded.
5.4 Governments
The Dutch government has generally supported the move towards the part-time economy by
improving rights and quality of part-time jobs. Already in the early 1980s there were
experiments based on subsidies to both employers and employees if they introduced and
accepted part-time work. But these experiments did have little effect and were deemed too
complicated (Leynse 1985). A massive research program in the possibilities and bottlenecks
of part-time employment was launched in the mid-1980s. By that time, social security laws
are individualised (1987) and some thresholds unfavourable to part-time workers are
removed. In comparison to many other countries, the Dutch social security laws were, and
are rather friendly to part-time workers (SZW 1995). The main principle of entry into the
system was and is the employment contract, regardless of working time. Coverage for health
insurance is also relatively easy for part-time workers. Moreover, the National Old Age
Pension Act provides every citizen with a flat-rate old age pension by the age of 65,
irrespective of previous employment or earnings. Employees can top up their pensions
through earnings related company or sectoral pension funds of which there are about 1,000
in the Netherlands. As from 1994 part-time workers with small jobs can no longer be
excluded from participation in these pension funds. Since the introduction of the statutory
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