3. Political Regulation of Part-Time Employment
3.2 Public Programmes to Encourage Part-Time Employment
3.2.3 Part-Time Employment in the Public Sector
The state in its capacity as employer can influence part-time employment trends directly in a variety of ways: by enabling public sector workers to
12 Some doubts about the reliability of these results are, however, called for: the OECD works on the basis of data on part-time employment which are heavily influenced by national definitions and in which all parHimers, not just married women are included;
data on national tax systems are based on broad estimates (which ignore·, for example, tax-free employment or discontinuous jumps in the rate of taxation); only the employee side of the social insurance system is incorporated; and other variables (such as number of children, availability of child-care facilities etc.) arenot included.
time basis. The countdes in our study have embarked on all three courses.
As early as the beginning of the 1970s, in almost all countries public sector workers were affered greater opportunities to switch from full- to
part-time employment. In Belgium, France, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and West Germany policy initiatives were initially aimed at affering long-term public sector workers the opportunity of reducing their working hours for the purposes of child-care or further training ( cf. Casey 1983); in the course of time the list of acceptable reasons has been extended. The interest of the state shifted towards the use of part-time employment as a means of reducing unemployment, in. particular that of specific labour market groups. The improved opportunities for part-time work within the West German school system, for instance, were at least partly a response to disproportionately high unemployment among teachers in West Germany ( cf. Dittrich et al. 1989).
In Belgium all permanent state employees are. entitled to reduce their working time by up to 50% for a period of two years, with guaranteed return to a full-time position (after a notification period). This is in effect a legal entitlement and no reason for the decision needs to be given.
Furthermore, the Belgian state has improved on standard statutory part-time provisions for older workers and for partial retirement by reducing age limits, affering wage supplements and counting part-time work as full-time for the purposes of pension entitlements.
In France, all state ernployees, not just those working permanently, have the right to reduce working hours with a guaranteed right toreturn to full-time employment. On demand, working full-time can be reduced to between 90% and 50% of regular hours for at least 6 months ( extensions are also possible ). The conditions for partial retirement in the public sector are morefavorable than in industry.
In West Germany, too, the opportunities for reducing working time for personal or social reasons (such as looking after children or invalid dependants) have been improved. Gradually (and depending on status) the maximum period for a partial or complete break from employment in the public sectorwas extended to 15 years. In cantrast to the situation in France and Belgium, however, in Germany permission for extended leave is subject to approval by the employer.
Particularly in Belgium, but also in Denmark, the Netherlands and in a number of Länder in West Germany a conscious policy
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affering certain public sector jobs on a part-time basis only was pursued. In Belgium, for example, all newcomers to the public sector are initially employed for one year on 80% of standiud working hours (and 80% of regular earnings). In the Netherlands youth recruits, in particular, are often affered exclusively part-time contracts while in West Germany (and a number of Länder) only part-time work was available to certain occupational groups (new recruits in the university system and teachers, for example ). In Denmark, on the other hand, all public sector employers were urged to organise work on a part-time basis where working schedules permitted: this happened without a formal Stipulation that all new recruits were to be employed on a part-time basis only.In the United Kingdom no programmes have been implemented specifically for public sector full-time workers beyond the general initiatives-which also apply in the public sector- described above.
Public sector rules and regulations in most countdes stipulate that part-time employment must be above the volume of hours needed to remain covered by statutory and collectively bargained social security protection.
Depending on the country and the precise regulation in question, not only do part-time workers in the public service generally receive equal (pro rata) pay to their full-time colleagues, but in the case of a number of rights (seniority rights, pension entitlement) a voluntary reduction in working time is treated as if full-time employment had in fact continued. Collective agreements which discriminated against part-time workers in the public
sector have been modified in most Countries and have considerably improved the position of state employees working part time.
The third form of direct state promotion (by central or local government) of part-time employment are labour market programmes. In this context, since the mid 1970s almost all countdes have modified public job creation measures ( either in general or for specific groups) in the direction of greater emphasis on part-time work.
In the United Kingdom, for example, the "Community Programme", the focus of which lied in the public sector and which aimed to provide jobs for the long~term unemployed, evolved over the years into a de facto part-time employment programme (in 1986 84% of the participants were working on apart-time basis). The trend towards job~sharing and the division of tasks on the basis of part-time work then had feedback effects into "regular"
working practices in the British public sector: more jobs are now affered on apart-time basis than was the case in the mid 1970s.
Similarly in France, public job creation measures ("Traveaux d'Utilite Collective" - TUC) for young people are now constituted exclusively on a part-time basis. Under the scheme unemployed youngsters are employed for 20 hours per week in public or non-profit organisations. A similar scheme exists in West Germany where, for certain groups including unemployed youth, job creation measures are available only in the form of part-time work or part-time combined with training. In Belgium, Denmark and the N etherlands part-time employment contracts are affered within the framework of public job creation programmes; i-n these countries, however, such measures were initially conceived of on a full-time basis.