Financial and Other Incentives for Employers

In order to make it attractive for employers to offer part-time employment, special programmes are in operation affering partial or complete exemption from employer's social security contributions.

This has occurred particularly in those countries whe.re the thresholds for obligatory social insurance are rather low or where employer contributions are due irrespective of the nature of individual employment contracts. Such exemption is usually tied to offers of employment to an unemployed person ( or to specific groups of the unernployed).

In Belgium, for example, employers are exempt from insurance contributions for workers recruited for at least half the regular working time who were previously unemployed and aged between 18 and 25;

training must also be provided and the exernption is subject to a time Iimit linked to the length of the training period.

France has made intensive use of a policy of exempting employers from insurance contributions for taking on unemployed workers. Cuts in contribution levels furthering part-time employment have usually been offered in conjunction with recruitment of young unemployed andin cases where part-time work is combined with traiiling. A further mechanism has been the so-called "solidarity contract" between an employer and th.e state which regulates the conditions of partial retirement and "part-time work

to reduce unemployment", together with the conditions ~f the reduction in contributions. France is the only country in which employers are also freed from additional contributions if they split jobs lying above the contribution-threshold. This means that if the Splitting of a full~time job would normally lead to higher employer contributions, the difference is waived by the state. This measure is intended to encourage part-time employment in better paid jobs.

In other countries the prime means used to promote part-time employment are wage subsidies. In the N etherlands for example, employers are entitled to a wage subsidy for employing unemployed persons under 25 years of age on a part~time basis (20 to 32 hours a week).

In the United Kingdom afixed wage subsidy is granted in the "Job-share"

programme which offers employers a bonus for a limited period for affering part-time work (between 16 and 29 hours per week) to unemployed or full-time workers; such part-time employment can be the result of the splitting of existing full-time jobs, the accumulation of overtime or a cut in full-time jobs ( cf. Meager 1988).

It is of note that neither Denmark nor West Germany offers employers wage subsidies or contribution exemptions in order to promote part-time

employment.

Looking at such programmes over time, it is apparent that since the end 1970s there has been a general reduction in public measures to promote part-time employment. The period up to the end of the 1970s was characterised by widespread experiments' with programmes (in the United Kingdom, for example, in the form of the job~splitting scheme, in the Netherlands with the programme of wage subsidies) aimed at increasing the acceptability and overall diffusion of part-time work, particularly in areas in which it had previously been relatively rare ( cf. Casey 1983).

Nowadays the programmes are concentrated on

- finding employment for target groups among the unemployed and

- providing youth training opportunities to facilitate the integration of young people into the labour market.

The latter type of programme, in particular, often involves more than merely promoting part-time employment. In the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and to some extent in France, such measures were associated with a fundamental restructuring of vocational training (such as the introduction of the Youth Training Scheme in the United Kingdom) and extension of existing forms of training ( as in the N etherlands ), or the creation of new modes of entry into the labour market (as has happened to some degree in France) ( cf. Hohenherger at al. 1989). This form of promoting part-time employment has to be interpreted in a rather different way than the use of general wage subsirlies in return for job sharing or recruiting the long-term unemployed. The aim of promoting

"part-time training" through such measures lies behind these arrangements. In countdes with a dual or more school-oriented training system (such as West Germany and Denmark) are trainees paid by the employer at way below regular wage rates, reflecting the fact that the young people in such training schemes spend only part of their time in the firm.

National governments may choose to create additional incentives to create part-time jobs by allowing deviations from various forms of legal regulations; this may allow part-time employment tobe used more flexibly and, in some cases, more cost effectively. However, as shown in section 3.2., the level of regulation of part-time employment has increased rather than decreased, and the scope for the flexible use of part-time work subjected to further restrictions in many countries. Collective agreements, too, are tending to restriet rather than facilitate the flexibility of part-time employment.

The following interpretation of these developments seems plausible. Until the late 1970s -and early 1980s governments were keen to promote the idea of part-time employment and sought to dismantle barriers to its diffusion, in particular by wooing employers. Now such promotion is all but unnecessary as the advantages of part-time work have caused it to spread rapidly in a nurober of industries. The spread of "unprotected" part-time work has reached such proportians in many countdes that the need has

been perceived to offer a degree of protection to part-time workers and to integrate them into existing systems of social security. Given that changes to the principles on which social security systems are based is a long and difficult process, the alternative presents itself of using statutory regulation to set standards for working time, length of contract etc. and so to integrate (some forms of) part-time employment into the "protected"

sector.

Because at the same time the problems of integrating young people into the labour force were becorning more and more evident, the promotion of part-time employment was combined with training measures and became an instrument with which to reform and modernise initial vocational training and facilitate labour market entry. This represents a shift from the general, indiscriminate promotion of part~time employment predominant at the beginning of the 1980s.

Sitnultaneously, the labour market problems of the long-term unemployed and of older workers have led to an intensification of schemes aimed at promoting part-time employment among these groups. To some extent these schemes have been used in adjunct to programmes of general wage-cost subsidies ( cf. also Burastat 1989).

A further trend is also evident, at least until1987; in many countdes both legislative and collective bargaining concern with changes in working-time practices were oriented towards a general reduction in full-time working hours and/ or their more flexible use. Euterprise agreements to reduce working time and/ or make it more flexible received financial support, especially in Belgium and France. Sometimes this applied to all workers, at others to older workers and were then linked to the introduction of part-time working. Thus, it is possible to conclude that even from the point of view of "working-time policy" the aim is no Ionger to promote part-time employment per se, but rather to increase the variety of "standard"

working time forms ( cf. also Bosch 1989).