Part-time work: Atypical? Precarious? Normal?
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Part-time work: Atypical? Precarious? Normal? Tobias Hinterseer
Received: 23 May 2013 / Accepted: 13 August 2013 # The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract There is no consensus among scholars about whether part-time work is an alerting signal of an on-going fragmentation of the labour market and of the rise in atypical working arrangements or whether it should be defined as a normal working condition as it is already fully embedded in social and labour legislation. According to the common definition of a normal, standard working condition, part-time work should be treated as atypical work. But does that also automatically make it precarious? This article starts with an overview of developments in flexibilisation and a status-quo analysis of the part-time working arrangements in Austria as a sign of labour market flexibilisation. It continues with a contention of whether part-time work as an atypical working arrangement is automatically linked to precarious working and living conditions. Using Austria as a starting point, this article closes by approaching a crucial question for all European labour markets: What form do future part-time work arrangements need to take in order to be considered “normal” from an employee’s point of view? This article concludes with the assertion that discussions on the future of part-time work should not be driven by questions of definition. Rather, it would be more productive for further research to focus on offering scope for freedom of choice and social security for part-time employees. Keywords Part-time work . Labour market flexibility . Austria . Policy pointers
Introduction We are facing an on-going trend on the labour markets in Europe: There is a significant move towards part-time work T. Hinterseer (*) Center for Futures Studies, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Urstein Süd 1, 5412 Puch/Salzburg, Austria e-mail: [email protected]
arrangements. Nearly every forth worker in Europe is working part-time (34 h or less, [1, p. 35]). Part-time working patterns vary across the continent. In the Netherlands, for example, almost half of the workforce is employed part-time, in the eight countries Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the UK almost a quarter of employees work in such arrangements, while in Bulgaria this figure is only around 2 %. A glance at the latest European Working Conditions Survey reveals that part-time working is generally synonymous with females: In the 27 EU countries, more than 30 % of women work part-time [1]. At the same time, an erosion of the normal employment conditions with respect to standard labour1 conditions and contracts can also be observed. The change of jobs, professions and working time patterns is a clear indicator for the development of increasing flexibility on Europe’s labour markets. “Working times are becoming more colourful and diverse, sometimes longer but also shorter, and certainly more flexible” [3]. There is no
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