Steffen Lehndorff*
„Tertiarisation“, work organisation and working-time regulation
Abstract
There is a widely held view that existing forms of labour market and, in particular, working time regulation in various continental European countries are no longer able to meet the economic needs of the future, since the “tertiarisation” requires flexibility and diversity in terms of products, employment and working-time forms. In the present paper, the “market orientation” of work in both services and manufacturing, rather than “tertiarisation”, is favoured as an alternative paradigm which creates room for the advent of “passive“ as well as “active“ approaches to temporal flexibility. The paper discusses the driving factors behind these trends as well as major challenges for future working-time regulation, including the implications of continuously rising female labour market participation and the “individualisation“ of working-time organisation within flexible working-time systems.
Contents
1 The cycle of working-time regulation 1.1 The rise to stability
1.2 The foundations undermined
1.3 A change of paradigm in wok organisation 2 New forms of working-time organisation
2.1 The extension of operating and opening hours
2.2 The flexibilisation of working times and operating hours 3 Work organisation and working-time regulation
3.1 The challenge to working-time regulation from passive flexibility 3.2 The challenge to working-time regulation from active flexibility
3.3 Marginal phenomena or harbingers of the social polarisation of working times?
4 The search for new models of working-time regulation 4.1 A new time arrangement (1): women's employment 4.2 A new time arrangement (2): work organisation 5 The outlook
Annexe: Figures and tables
* Dr. Steffen Lehndorff, Institut Arbeit und Technik / Wissenschaftszentrum Nordrhein-Westfalen, Abteilung Arbeitsmarkt, Munscheidstr. 14, D-45886 Gelsenkirchen. email: lehndorff@iatge.de
Steffen Lehndorff
"Tertiarisation", work organisation and working-time regulation
Irregular hours encouraged him to imagine that he was master of his own time (E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News)
In a world in which the deregulation of labour markets is seen as the key to increasing the international competitiveness of national economies and encouraging employment growth, it would be a bold person indeed who would predict a golden future for working-time regulation. The fact that the prevailing forms of working-time regulation in Europe are, even today, a product of the industrial age and, in many countries, are displaying clear signs of imminent breakdown further bolsters this pessimistic view. This being so, it has to be asked whether increasing "tertiarisation" will not ultimately lead to the death of all forms of working-time regulation.
This issue is currently a particularly explosive one in the German debate.
Influential commentators have produced statistics to show that Germany is lagging behind the USA and several Western European countries in the development of its service sector and attribute this gap largely to institutional rigidities. Pointing to countries with such different labour market institutions as Denmark, the Netherlands and the USA, social scientists advising the German federal government have concluded that services require "a different work regime to that in manufacturing industry" and argued for a shift away from the "de luxe employment relationship" that still characterises German manufacturing industry"
(Streeck/Heinze 1999: 41). Even Baethge (1999: 11), who does not agree with this conclusion in any way, concurs with the initial finding, namely that the
"temporal organisation of work" will change fundamentally because "the general nature of work in the service sector in the 21st century (will) be completely different from that of work in manufacturing industry in the 20th century. Clearly defined, relatively permanent and hierarchical corporate and employment structures will be replaced by increasingly flexible forms of work and the temporary, constantly changing organisational forms that characterise networked and/or virtual companies."
Undoubtedly, the world of work can provide much evidence in support of this forecast. On the other hand, it is wholly unclear whether and how such trends, if they exist, are connected with the growth in services. There are at present too many gaps in our knowledge of the forces driving the development of new forms of employment and working time in the very diverse world of service activities.
For example, it is unclear what contribution the specific characteristics of activities in strategic areas of growth in the service sector are making to the structural change taking place in employment and working time, what interactions there are with the labour supply and the mode of labour market regulation in each national context and how the very different national development paths in the service sector are affecting employment and working-time forms.1 The only thing that is certain is that the expansion of the service sector has been accompanied by a number of very different, indeed contradictory trends in the organisation of firms, employment and working time, some of which at least mark a considerable departure from those that characterised industrial mass production. Nor can there be any doubt that a number of new and highly differentiated trends in the organisation of work and working time can be observed not only in services but also in manufacturing industry.
Thus it may be very tempting to attribute the decline in the industrial-capitalist mode of the temporal organisation of work, and of the associated forms of working-time regulation, to "tertiarisation". However, as Häußermann/Siebel (1995: 12) rightly point out, so long as we have no concept of the "service society" that goes beyond that of a "residual category", then adducing
"tertiarisation" as an explanation for the decline of the established forms of working-time regulation may amount to little more than an empty formula behind which other more convincing but hitherto unrevealed explanations might be lurking (Bosch 1998). A more promising approach, it seems to me, is to investigate the ways in which manufactured goods and services are produced.
The present paper takes this thought as the starting point for an attempt to shed some light on the perceptible break-up of established temporal institutions. The first argument we advance is that the regulation of working time, as we still know it in Europe in its various forms, has from the outset been embedded in the various forms of plant-level work organisation and in broader social time arrangements. On the basis of new trends in working-time organisation identified in the course of a number of European projects on changes in working time, we will then show how the mode of working-time organisation that has been established for decades is currently being turned upside down.2 Various models of work organisation are now competing with one another, while at the same time the established time arrangements in the wider society are being eroded. There
1 A research project currently being conducted as part of the European Commission’s TSER programme is intended to help fill these gaps. The present paper was written against the background of this project (New Forms of Employment and Working Time in the Service Economy/NESY). For further information on NESY see http://iat-info.iatge.de
2 The European research projects on changes in working-time organisation that have been carried out in recent years at the IAT or with the participation of the IAT, and on which the present paper is based, focused on a) the link between working time and work organisation in new working-time systems, drawing on more than 50 case studies in nine countries (Lehndorff 1999a;
Lindecke 2000), b) changes in employment and working-time forms in the retail trade (Kirsch et al. 1999; Baret/Lehndorff/Sparks 2000) and c) on the effects of just-in-time production on working time in the European automotive component supply industry (Lehndorff 1997).
is no sign yet of the emergence of a new, durable form of working-time regulation that would once again be compatible with established modes of work organisation and other time arrangements. The task of developing new models of time organisation in the workplace and in the wider society has not yet begun.
1 The cycle of working-time regulation
The regulation of employment conditions stands in opposition to the market and to competition and yet at the same time recreates them in a new guise. In its simplest form, that of a collective agreement between one employer and his employees, it eliminates competition among the employees in respect of the employment conditions laid down in the agreement. Only in this way can two initially unequal parties acquire the power to bargain in the internal labour market. Disputes about minimum conditions are temporarily suspended.
However, this may lead to distortion of the conditions of inter-firm competition.
This can be prevented by collective agreements enforceable beyond the limits of the individual firm (e.g. at industry level) or by the introduction of statutory minimum conditions. Both of these instruments offer employees a better chance of improving their employment conditions (irrespective of their bargaining power within individual companies). From the employers’ point of view, they have the advantage of removing the contractually defined employment conditions from inter-firm competition. In this way, the competition can be concentrated in other areas, the example the improvement of production processes or of product quality.
For around 150 years, working time has been a central element in the regulation of employment conditions in Europe. The widespread introduction of the eight- hour day, and later of the 40-hour week, led to the establishment in the industrialised countries of working-time standards that have certain basic characteristics in common. For full-time workers, working time is restricted by collective agreements and/or statute; work schedules are laid down either in collective or individual agreements and are either fixed or follow regularly recurring patterns (shift systems); in manufacturing industry, with a few clearly defined exceptions, working time is concentrated in the standard working week, i.e. from Monday to Friday, while in some service industries the standard working week includes all or part of the weekend. The agreed working time is also distributed evenly over the week and the year, with any variations and interruptions being subject to agreed rules. Any hours worked in excess of the agreed working time or any divergences from the agreed work schedules attract additional remuneration.
The institutions of working-time regulation vary considerably across Europe.
Thus, for example, there is a world of difference between the British tradition of
"job control" and the French legislation on working time. Nevertheless, all of these different modes of regulation are based on the same basic idea of cushioning the effect of market fluctuations on working time (and indeed on the
employment relationship as a whole). Regulation of the time during which an employee is at the disposal of his or her employer increases the economic need on the part of the employer to use his employees’ labour as methodically and regularly as possible. If he is unable to manage with the contractually agreed volume of labour at his disposal, then it is who initially bears the risk, the level of which is assessed in terms of a pre-defined surcharge, namely the payment of overtime premia. The underutilisation of working time also increases unit labour costs for the employer. In other words, the regulation of working time can be seen as a curtailment of the link between working time and the market. In this sense, it indirectly endorses the function of the entrepreneur, who interposes himself between his dependent employees and the market as an agent authorised to issue directions, and ultimately reflects the function of the firm itself, whose essence lies in the non-market provision of services.3
The evolution of working-time regulation is closely interwoven with the spread of and structural changes in work in manufacturing industry in the 19th and 20th centuries. Why has it remained stable right up to the present day?
1.1 The rise to stability
The most important driving forces in the regulation of working time were undoubtedly the trade unions’ efforts to restrict the length of the working day (together with supportive interventions by the State). The major advances in working-time regulation were the result of revolutions (as in the period immediately following the end of the First World War, when the eight-hour day was introduced in most European countries) or of radical, state-led reforms (such as the enshrinement in law of the 40-hour week in the USA by the Roosevelt administration). "Hour reductions usually were political" (Cross 1997: 7).
Nevertheless, employers were always able to adjust to the new regulations put in place without their assistance or against their will and, over the short or long term, to use them to their own advantage. Thus the social and political upheavals that led to the major turning points in the development of working time were followed by longer periods characterised by working time arrangements based on a symbiotic relationship between working time and work organisation.
One particularly influential arrangement, still in use in many areas, was the organisation of working time in manufacturing industry within the context of the
"scientific management" system. The eight-hour day became the accepted framework for the rationalisation of interlinked, standardised tasks that were specified in complete detail. The stopwatch and the time clock, two devices dedicated to the accurate measurement of time, symbolise both the technical and
3 According to transaction cost theory, a firm becomes necessary at the point at which its organisation, in which the management hierarchy takes the place of factor allocation through the price mechanism, is more efficient than the market (Coase, 1988). Marx had this specific role of the firm in mind when he drew attention to the contrast between the organisation of markets, which are driven by competition, and the authoritarian organisation of individual firms.
the control aspects of Taylorism, while at the same time representing the working-time arrangement concealed within the scientific management system:
− The stopwatch is used by employers in order to develop and establish standards allowing the available time to be utilised as intensively as possible;
at the same time, however, it gives workers a (temporary) guarantee that they will not lose the room for manoeuvre they create for themselves and which makes the monotony of the daily grind more bearable or shorter. Ironically, this room for manoeuvre, gained by working more quickly or more efficiently than at the time the relevant time-and-motion studies were carried out, helps to prevent the easily damaged production machinery from coming to a halt even more frequently, thereby making Taylorism ultimately viable.
− The time clock, on the other hand, represents the control aspect of Taylorism, which resides largely in the strict division of the conception and execution of tasks and in the strict adherence by workers to the rules drawn up by industrial engineers. Set up as an instrument of control in order to prevent workers from withholding paid working time, it also delivers into the hands of workers a means of either preventing any exceeding of contractual working time or earning extra money for any additional hours worked. Check and countercheck became the core of the various, national-specific industrial relations systems.
At the same time, the major compromises on working time were embedded in wider social time arrangements. In particular, the campaigns conducted by trade unionists and politicians in favour of the eight-hour day were closely linked to the notion of the male breadwinner whose wife was free from the drudgery of earning a living and could devote all her time to household activities and raising children.
Cross (1997: 16) cites the classic slogan adopted by the American trade unions at the end of the 19th century: "eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will", which tellingly reflects an exclusively male perspective on working-time reduction. The eight-hour day became a fundamental element in the standard employment relationship, in which the sole (or principal) male breadwinner, supported by the unpaid work done by his wife in the home, was both a cultural norm and the bedrock of the entire social security system (and still is today in some European countries, such as Germany).
For all the diversity of the world of work and of its modes of time organisation, even at the height of Taylorist mass production, the eight-hour day was the basis for a social time arrangement that initially remained relatively unaffected by the expansion of the service sector. For a long time, the rhythm of the eight-hour day in manufacturing industry also influenced the work processes in large parts of the service sector and became the main synchroniser of patterns of time use throughout society. Ultimately, it created space for the development of the consumer society, which made possible the widespread diffusion of mass production. It was within these working-time structures that the virtuous circle of strong and sustained growth in production, consumption and employment
(Appelbaum 1995) developed after the Second World War, a period that has, in retrospect, become known as the "golden age of capitalism".
Thus the established mode of working-time regulation is part of a social arrangement that has over decades drawn its strength from several sources: the efforts of trade unions to restrict working time, the symbiotic relationship between working time and work organisation, the dominant model of growth and the standard employment relationship, which contains within it a "gender contract". If the length of the standard working week is taken as a basic indicator of the effectiveness of working time regulation, the working time profiles of the various European countries show that the old time arrangement still has some strength left in it. Clearly, the normative effect of working-time regulation is not linked to the varying levels of development of the service sector; only in Great Britain does there seem to be an absence of general working-time standards, while in Denmark, where the service sector is as highly developed as in Great Britain, working times are even more standardised than in Germany, where according to the statistics the service sector lags behind the other two countries (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The distribution of hours normally worked per week in Germany, France, Great Britain and Denmark (dependent employees, 1987-95)
And yet the stability of the mode of working-time regulation reflected in such working-time profiles should not be overestimated. With the rise of part-time working and flexitime, the last 20 years have seen the establishment of two forms of working time which, it is true, are now regulated in many countries through collective agreements or legislation, albeit to a considerably lesser extent than the standard full-time form. And yet the widespread diffusion of these forms of working time set in motion the gradual relativisation of the basic characteristics of the standard working day, to which we now turn.
1.2 The foundations undermined
The factors that produced the existing time arrangement and from which it drew its strength are now going through a period of upheaval. Both the demand and the supply side of the labour market are experiencing something akin to tectonic shifts, and the effects of the forces at work there are impacting on the organisation of work and of working time.
The basic reason for these shifts, and the fundamental cause of the changes taking place in the demand for labour, is the change in the growth regime. The strong growth of the decades immediately following the Second World War was based to a large extent on the increased capacity of the market to absorb standardised, mass-produced goods. The past few decades, however, have seen the gradual emergence of a global market, in which large suppliers compete directly with one another, while at the same time long-term average growth rates in the mature economies have declined. Time is becoming an
important factor in competition, not only in the provision of goods and services in existing , increasingly tight markets, but also, and above all, in opening up new markets. The boom in the financial economy that has accompanied the reduced growth in the goods-based economy (Huffschmid 1999) is further intensifying this competition. Performance in the financial markets is becoming a criterion of success in the provision of goods and services, with the goods-based economy becoming a function of the financial economy. The combined effect of these two trends, that is declining growth in product markets and the key role now played by the financial markets, is a massive increase in competition, with the pressure to reduce costs being transmitted with ever greater intensity to every nook and cranny of the manufacturing and service sectors. This has considerable implications for the temporal organisation of work. The "unwieldiness" of individual working time (Bosch 1996: 22), the result of regulations that seek to counter the market principle, is increasingly being regarded as fundamentally incompatible with the competitiveness of individual firms or entire economies.
The foundations of the eight-hour day are, at the same time, being undermined by simultaneous changes in the labour supply (Bosch/Dawkins/Michon 1994).
The strong and sustained increase in female labour market participation rates, which has taken place in very different ways and at different rates in the various European countries, is changing the "social basis" of the established mode of working-time regulation, since it has been accompanied by the rapid and widespread diffusion of part-time working, which is relatively weakly regulated.
Furthermore, the expansion of higher education, combined with the declining level of financial support for students, has led to the emergence of a large and flexible supply of school and university students who find it increasingly necessary to take part-time jobs. The share of young people in the EU aged between 15 and 29 working part-time in order to help to fund their education or training rose in the short period between 1987 and 1995 from 22 to 33% of their age group (Bosch 2000a).
In many countries, these new entrants to the labour market have to date been inaccessible to the trade unions or have not been taken seriously as an important target group, quite apart from the organisational problems caused, among other things, by the rapid growth in the number of small firms, particularly in the service sector. As a result, the most important promoters of the established mode of working-time regulation have been weakened in some countries, in some cases dramatically so.
All this is impacting on work organisation. The basis of the prevailing mode of working-time regulation, namely the symbiotic relationship between working time and work organisation that became established over decades, is beginning to break up. The spread of Taylorism and of the eight-hour day was accompanied by a process of work intensification that gave a further push to the interaction between increased job performance and reduced working time. Working-time reductions, such as the establishment of the 40-hour week in the 1960s and 70s,
spurred employers into introducing more efficient systems of work organisation and thereby contributed to a further rise in labour productivity and work intensification, which in turn prompted the trade unions to push for further reductions in working time. Once it reaches a certain point, the reduction in the length of the standard working day below the eight-hour mark requires firms to reorganise working time if a reduction in operating hours is to be avoided (Bosch/Lehndorff 1988). Working-time reductions won by the trade unions, some of them also State-sponsored for reasons of employment policy (as in France), are increasingly becoming the catalyst for a shift in the significance of working- time organisation. While working time has, until now, been a framework for the effective and efficient deployment of labour, it is now itself becoming a means of rationalisation and, more generally, an instrument for increasing competitiveness.
Company working-time policy can help to reduce personnel costs and increase capital productivity; at the same time, it can also be used to acquire skilled workers, to motivate employees and to increase product quality.
These are major social and economic trends that can only be outlined in brief here. They are bringing about a change in work organisation that ultimately poses a challenge to the basic philosophy underlying all forms of working-time regulation.
1.3 A paradigm shift in work organisation
As already stated, the core objective of working-time regulation is to restrict the linkage between individual working time and the market principle. The newly emerging forms of working-time organisation, on the other hand, which will be described in greater detail in the following sections, are intended to restore that linkage with as few restrictions as possible. Work and working time are aligned directly with the market. As a result of changes in the conditions of competition, firms feel obliged to adjust working times to fluctuations in orders and customer flows in order to help reduce reaction times to the minimum while keeping costs as low as possible. In traditional working-time systems, this objective was achieved in busy periods by working overtime, for which premia had to be paid, and in slacker periods by labour hoarding; if the slack periods persisted, then short-time working, with all its cost implications, was also used. With the new forms of working-time organisation, however, such fluctuations have become an element in the normal functioning of the working-time system.
There is nothing new in firms seeking to re-establish the link between working time and the market. What is new is that they would appear increasingly to be succeeding in so doing. Why is this?
Probably the most important factor in explaining this fundamental shift of emphasis are the much-debated processes of restructuring currently taking place in the corporate sector, in the inter-firm division of labour and in governance mechanisms (Rubery 1999; on the German debate cf. Moldaschl/Sauer 2000
and the references cited therein). Large firms are undergoing a process of vertical disintegration, in which the individual links in the value-added chain are being made independent of each other. These profit centres compete with each other as well as with other firms. Their competitiveness is increased by cutting down on their resources (cutbacks in stocks held as well as in staffing levels). By deliberately reducing certainties, these production units are forced into a strategy of permanent rationalisation. The pressure to rationalise applies to both inter- firm and intra-firm relations, "in order to permeate the notion of market orientation into the very microstructure of each production unit (that is right down to the last individual worker)" (Sauer/Döhl 1994). As a result, each individual involved in the creation of a product has to take account of the entire production process and the constraints of the market.
Just-in-time production is the paradigm case of this trend. As a trade unionist in a French automotive component supply firm trenchantly observed in an interview, "It is the customer who now confronts the workers, not the boss". This observation does not mean that the boss no longer exists. However, he does step to one side to a certain extent, thereby forcing his employees to confront the market directly in their work. This has implications for the quality of their work, for example, as well as for the duration, scheduling and organisation of their working time. This direct encounter with the customer rather than the boss applies, as we shall see, to employees in extremely diverse activities and status groups right across the entire labour market.
The challenge facing working-time regulation could not be greater. If the market were at all times and in all places the sole efficient organisational principle (cf.
the basic argument in transaction cost theory outlined in note 3), then firms would not be necessary! It is this distinction between the market and the firm that also gives rise to working-time regulation, and it is precisely this distinction that is now apparently becoming blurred. Disputes about working time are no longer neutralised for a limited period, as in the traditional mode of working-time regulation, but are being individualised. Firms are dealing with the demand for temporal flexibility by devolving responsibility in various ways to the individual employee. In extreme cases, there is a direct, one-to-one correspondence between the firm's time flexibility requirements and the time flexibility demands made of individual workers.
This form of individualisation can ultimately undermine any attempt to regulate working time. Whereas the classic mode of working-time regulation gave bargaining power to both sides in the internal labour market, bringing individual workers face to face with the market introduces a fundamental shift in the balance of power. It is this aspect of the individualisation of working-time organisation that immediately strikes critical observers.
However, there is another aspect to the individualisation of working-time organisation that should not be dismissed as a mere propagandist trick. It holds
out the possibility for individuals to adjust their working time more precisely to their needs and at the same time to develop their abilities and put them to better use in their work. In Germany, for example, a recent survey of 19,000 firms found that 31% of the firms that had introduced flexible forms of working time had done so in an attempt to increase employee motivation (in the service sector - excluding distribution - the figure was as high as 48%, in distribution 25% and in manufacturing industry 27%; DIHT 2000). This offer being made to employees may to some extent be deceptive and amount to little more than sweet music accompanying a deterioration in employment conditions and a massive shift in the balance of power to the detriment of dependent employees. Nevertheless, such an interpretation may well not give an accurate picture of the situation. If we are not to succumb to the risk of underestimating the possible effectiveness of the individualisation of working-time organisation and the implicit challenge it presents to the established institutions of working-time regulation, it is advisable, while maintaining the necessary critical distance, to take seriously the opportunity it holds out to individuals without ignoring the shift in the balance of power already alluded to.
For the real threat the new forms of working-time organisation pose for the established mode of working-time regulation is that they not only offer firms better opportunities to undermine the regulatory institutions but also provide employees with strong encouragement to take the initiative in circumventing these same institutions. It would be quite wrong to confuse these opportunities with reality, which in most EU member states, as indicated in Figure 1, is still shaped by the institutions associated with the standard employment relationship, which include the regulation of working time through collective agreements or legislation. Nevertheless, the dual tendency towards undermining and circumventing is already manifesting itself in many ways in standard employment relationships, while on the "upper" and "lower" margins of the labour market it is reflected in the actual disintegration of effective working-time regulation.4 We will enlarge on this idea in the next section, taking the most important characteristics of the new forms of working-time organisation as a starting point.
2 New forms of working-time organisation
4 Unfortunately, the German industrial sociology and labour market research suffers from a division of labour between authors who - to overstate the case somewhat - focus either on the
"worker entrepreneur" at the upper end of the labour market or the "marginal part-time employee"
at the lower end. As a result, the various aspects of market orientation are sometimes not considered in context, and the still-dominant standard employment relationship can be completely lost from view. As a result, it is likely that either the spread of precarious employment or the blurring of the boundaries between dependent employment and self-employment will be interpreted one-sidedly as heralding the future of work. Cf., by way of example, the article by Voß/Pongratz (1998), which has had an important influence on the German debate, and, for a critical response, Bosch (2000c) and Flecker (2000).
It is no accident that, to date, there have been virtually no meaningful and comparable quantitative findings on the changes in working-time organisation and their effects on working-time realities. It is in the nature of these changes that they are difficult to measure. However, we know from the study of working- time changes at plant or establishment level (cf. note 2) that the new forms of working-time organisation that are being developed in many European countries share some astonishingly similar characteristics. True, there are considerable differences, some of them country-specific, that are attributable to the various national industrial relations systems, among other things, and which make it clear that there are still opportunities for the contractual or statutory regulation of new forms of working-time organisation. However, if we are to be able to recognise the implicit challenge to the regulation of working time contained within these new forms of working time, then we have to identify the main trends in the new forms of working time that firms are seeking to put in place. Some of their characteristics differ radically from the forms of working-time organisation that have prevailed to date. These characteristics do not generally occur together;
indeed, it is precisely the multifarious nature of the models and the diversity of links between the various elements listed here that characterises the new forms of working time:
− the length of daily working time fluctuates or is differentiated for the various groups within the workforce;
− the week is de facto or even explicitly no longer the reference point for defining working time, which may be distributed irregularly over the year (which is frequently the new reference point) or over a period of several years;
− as a result, the contractual working-time standards that still exist become mere arithmetical values, so that the exceeding of a certain daily or weekly working time no longer attracts additional payments, or only under certain very restrictive conditions;
− the same applies to the expansion of working time into hitherto unusual ("unsocial") times, such as the night or the weekend, which are expressly designated part of standard working time - the blurring or levelling of the difference between "social" and "unsocial" hours and the associated change in social norms (or the reflection of such changes) is one of the most important characteristics of many new working-time systems;
− agreed working-time patterns are not fixed but reversible;
− working time is becoming "informal": in some cases, no attempt at all is made to establish even temporary working-time patterns;
− working-time patterns that have hitherto been prevalent among white-collar workers (e.g. flexitime) are now being introduced into production departments, and vice versa (e.g. shift work);
− the full-time standard is being abandoned as a reference point, or is being relativised; as a result, employment contracts with a range of differing working times are being concluded;
− not only different working times but also different employment forms can be combined with each other, such as full-time and part-time, agency work or telework.
Of course, there have always been areas in which one or other of the working- time characteristics listed here could be found. However, they were exceptions, confined to particular industries or groups of occupations. This limitation no longer applies to the working-time systems under investigation here; indeed, it is precisely the lack of limitation that is the key characteristic of the new forms of working time. The exception is gradually becoming the rule.
Closer examination of the new working-time models shows that, with the aid of a simple typology, it is possible to identify two main trends in the changes in working-time organisation. In very many cases, they are combined with each other:
− the extension of operating and opening hours,
− and the flexibilisation of working time and operating hours. In the case of flexibilisation, two different basic patterns can again be identified, the difference between them being that, in the one case, time flexibility depends more on numerical flexibility while, in the other, it is achieved largely through functional flexibility.
We now turn to these main trends in the reorganisation of working time, which in reality manifest themselves in a variety of hybrid forms.
2.1 The extension of operating and opening hours
For some decades now, long opening and operating hours, including all or part of the night or weekend, have been an established fact in certain areas of the manufacturing and service sectors. Working as a nurse or in the iron and steel industry was and still is in most cases synonymous with alternating shifts and night and weekend work. Today, however, work at "unsocial hours" is increasingly less confined to particular occupational groups. The provision of services outside standard opening and office hours has become a key factor in competition in manufacturing and services alike. In manufacturing industry, account also has to be taken of the enormous increase in the investment required for modern plant and machinery, so that extending machine operating times is the only way of producing goods at competitive unit costs. The extension of regular working times for many employees into the late evening and weekend is not adequately captured in the statistics, because at the same time some of the occupational groups that have traditionally worked nights and weekend on a regular basis (e.g. steelworkers) are declining in importance.
The continuing flexibilisation of working times and operating hours is taking a wide variety of different forms.
2.2 The flexibilisation of working times and operating hours
Flexibilisation is of equal importance in manufacturing and services. A traditional characteristic of many areas of the service sector is the particular time regime to which they are subject: services must be provided at the precise moment at which they are purchased. For this reason, firms operating in those areas subject to this time regime must ensure that manning levels are adjusted to the sometimes sharp fluctuations in customer flows. It is true that, by rationalising services, firms are able to shield certain sections of the service delivery chain from these fluctuations by producing them in advance so that they can be "put into storage". In manufacturing industry, however, a contrary process is taking place: the conventional mass production of standardised goods to be held in stock is being replaced by the production of "variably standardised" or
"individualised" mass-produced items manufactured on a "modular" or "sectional"
basis. The various parts of each product have to be produced on a "just-in-time"
basis in order that they can be made available to customers at the lowest possible cost. This "customising" of product and service content and of the timing of the production process is a feature common to manufacturing industry and many areas of the service sector. It is very much in the interests of firms in both sectors to reduce the level of capital committed and to avoid paid working time that is not directly productive. The results are more flexible labour deployment and more flexible working times, whether opening and operating hours are fixed or fluctuating.
Recent years have seen the widespread introduction of flexible systems of working-time organisation. In Germany, for example, the company survey already cited (DIHT 2000) found that only 37% of firms made no use at all of flexible forms of working time (Table 1). The same survey found that 65% of firms had made the transition to more flexible systems of working-time organisation only since 1997. In a representative survey of German employees, 37% of those surveyed at the end of the decade stated that they were working in systems with working-time accounts (Groß/Munz 1999).
Table 1: The use of flexible working-time forms in German firms
As already mentioned, however, the term "flexible working-time forms" conceals a number of very different approaches, depending on whether the required time flexibility is achieved more through numerical or through functional flexibility. In reality, they frequently occur in conjunction with each other; nevertheless, the
"design characteristics" of the relevant system of working-time organisation can be clearly distinguished from each other.
The most obvious characteristic of the first named variant is the variation in the number of workers deployed over time - whether in the course of a day, a week or a year. Employers adopting such systems may have recourse to the external
labour market in order to recruit workers on fixed-term contracts or temporary agency workers. However, numerical flexibility depends increasingly on the internal labour market as well, that is on the permanent workforce. In this case, part-time workers in particular are deployed according to need at fixed or changing times of the day or week. In manufacturing, this form of flexibility has to date relied largely on the so-called "peripheral workforce" (employees on fixed- term contracts or temporary agency workers; in the service sector, employers have relied largely on part-timers, some of them working very few hours per week, and to a lesser extent on seasonal workers. The basic principle is the same, however: to vary the volume of labour by changing the number of workers deployed.
Promoters of this form of working-time organisation include call centres (Bittner et al. 2000) and large retail outlets (Baret/Lehndorff/Sparks 2000; cf. also Dorothea Voss-Dahm’s paper to be presented at the conference). Through the use of methods that are essentially a further development of Taylorist time-and- motion studies, every effort is made to ascertain as precisely as possible the staffing levels required at each point of the day, week and year. The primary objective is at no point to have either too many or too few employees present who have to be paid.
A distinction has to be made between such systems and those in which the volume of labour is adjusted by varying employees' working time. As in conventional flexitime systems, the duration and scheduling of individual working time changes over time. There are three main differences between the new systems and conventional flexitime systems. Firstly, the initiative for varying working time no longer comes solely or primarily from employees, since operational considerations are now the main factor that has to be taken into account. Secondly, the definition of standard working time is frequently extended to include evenings and weekends. In this way, employers can reduce or completely eliminate paid overtime, since working time that once attracted premia has been redefined as standard working time. Thirdly, the period within which variable working times have to be averaged out to the contractual working time may be one or more years. In some cases, no such equalisation period is laid down at all.
Variable working-time systems are currently experiencing a boom in manufacturing and services in Germany. The change in the engineering industry, which by 1995 had completed the phased introduction of the 35-hour week, has been relatively well researched. Within the space of just a few years, almost one third of establishments with a work council concluded agreements providing for the possible adjustment of weekly working time to fluctuations in workloads (Herrmann et al. 1999: 144). It is true that, up to now, only 16% of employees in the engineering industry are regularly affected by fluctuations in working time; however, in those establishments in which a company agreement
on this matter has been concluded, almost 55% of the workforce work variable hours (ibid. 147).
Will now examine these two variants in greater detail and consider their possible effects on the system of working-time regulation, taking the German case as an example.
3 Work organisation and working-time regulation
Most firms do not necessarily combine the reorganisation of working time with a strategy for reforming their system of work organisation. This is evident from the fact that most firms currently give a short-term reduction in labour costs, particularly by cutting down on overtime premia, as their main reason for introducing flexible working-time systems (this was the main objective to be achieved by reorganising working time for 60% of the German companies surveyed; DIHT 2000). However, this should not blind us to the fact that the variation of working times follows a completely different internal logic from the variation of manning levels over the course of time, even if management in many companies is not always fully aware of the implications of their own actions in terms of work organisation and strategy.
Behind flexible working times lie concealed new paradigms of work organisation.
The main difference between them is whether management tasks are devolved to employees and the increase in time flexibility is achieved primarily through passive or active employee involvement (Figure 2).5
− In one paradigm, time flexibility is achieved primarily through numerical flexibility. It requires work to be divided into simple constituent elements, so that the workers responsible for performing the resultant standardised tasks can be replaced at any time at short notice. In this system of work organisation, time flexibility depends essentially on the availability of workers at the time at which they are required by the firm. For this reason, we call this variant "passive flexibility".
− In the other paradigm, time flexibility is achieved primarily through functional flexibility. Firms do not wish or are not in a position to dispense with the abilities and experience of a certain group within the core workforce. From this starting point, it is but a short step to the conclusion that responsibility for the planning of working time should be delegated to employees, at least in part. It is this delegation of responsibility to employees, a decision that does not necessarily always have to be taken immediately or to be readily apparent to all the actors, that justifies the term "active flexibility".
Figure 2: New forms of working-time organisation
5 The twin concepts of passive and active flexibility have been developed in greater detail elsewhere (Lehndorff 1999b) by means of a critical comparison with Atkinson’s (1984) well-known flexibility model.
For all their differences, these two methods of organising time flexibility have a common root. They are based on the greater individualisation of working-time organisation that arises out of the increased market orientation of work. They are not specific to either the service or manufacturing sector, but are emerging across the boundaries between the two sectors because, to exaggerate for the purposes of simplification, they are linked, on the one hand, to the increased service orientation of work in manufacturing and, on the other, to the industrialisation of work in services. This statement will be examined in greater detail below, since it is crucial to the main theme of this paper. In both their common core and their different variants, market-oriented forms of working-time organisation pose a challenge to the regulation of working time; the mechanism is fundamentally similar in both cases, but the attack comes from two completely different sides.
3.1 The challenge to working-time regulation from passive flexibility
In the "passive flexibility" variant, employees’ work schedules are drawn up and assigned by management. In organisations that use this variant, work is typically divided up into its simple constituent elements. Functional differentiation is consequently very high. Workers have to be as interchangeable as possible, so that they can be deployed according to need.
In essence, passive flexibility is in many respects synonymous with the fragmentation of work:
− fragmentation of the work process through its division into specialised, standardised individual activities (high functional differentiation),
− fragmentation of employment through the use of fixed-term employment contracts or of contracts offering only a few hours’ work per week,
− fragmentation of working time through short or variable work schedules.
In the service sector, the standardisation and dividing up of activities has acquired great significance, and is being applied increasingly to classic advisory services. This can be seen as a trend towards "service-sector Taylorism" or
"neo-Taylorism" (Rubery 1999, Gadrey 2000). As in the mode of work organisation that characterised industrial mass production, the conception and execution of tasks are separated and work is divided into its simplest constituent elements and standardised; what is new is that the direct customer contact such services involve has led to the replacement of "simple physical work" with "simple communication work" (Bosch 2000a). True, employees must be present as personalities or individuals, but they have to adhere to tightly defined standards governing the communicational and emotional aspects of their work.
What is particularly important here from the point of view of working-time regulation is that, unlike classic Taylorism, the standardisation of tasks is not
accompanied by the standardisation of working times. Quite the opposite! The standardisation of tasks provides the basis for the undermining of working-time standards.
The relatively low level of regulation governing part-time work, and particularly marginal part-time jobs offering only a few hours’ work per week, plays a key role in the undermining of working-time standards. In the German retail trade, for example, the trade unions’ attempts to bring the regulation of part-time work closer to that of full-time work through collective agreements have so far proved unsuccessful (Kirsch et al. 1999). One significant "blank area" in the regulatory framework governing part-time work is the risk of working times that cannot be planned in advance. Among full-time workers in the German retail trade, 11.1%
claim that the duration and scheduling of their working time depends on their employer’s operational requirements; among part-timers, the share is 28.8%
(Bauer et al. 1998). In most cases, workers are given very little notice of their work schedules, and are frequently notified of them just a few days in advance.
The fact that the retail trade is the leader in the use of "flexible weekly working times", as Table 1 shows, is essentially attributable to this practice.6
However, the spread of passive flexibility cannot be attributed solely to the structure of the demand for labour from retail firms, but also to the structure of the labour supply. In addition to the young people who are interested in part-time jobs as they continue their school or university education, the major influx of women into the labour market is of fundamental importance. They take part-time jobs (or are forced to do so) because they continue to bear the main responsibility for children and the provision of childcare facilities is inadequate and German schools still finish in the early afternoon. It is hardly a matter of dispute that the conventional division of roles between the sexes is still the prevailing social norm. Moreover, as in several other European countries, the German taxation and social security systems reward so-called marginal part-time jobs offering very few hours’ work per week (Dingeldey 1999). Against this background, retail companies in Germany, for example, have to date experienced relatively little difficulty in meeting their need for part-timers able to work irregular hours at short notice. As a result, working-time regulation on the lower margin of the labour market is being both undermined and circumvented.
6 As our case studies in the retail trade show, such labour management practices are not without their problems for firms as well. The fragmentation of employment and working times can give rise to hidden costs, as a result of high labour turnover or a reduction in service quality. For this reason, there is a minority of firms that discover that it is in their interest not to have part-timers working excessively short hours, to allow individuals to plan their working times and, more generally, to offer stable employment relationships. Thus it would be misleading to regard passive flexibility as an inevitable consequence of the rationalisation of low-skill service activities.
Rather, there is some scope for management to make its own decisions on personnel policy, in close conjunction with its product strategy, i.e. the firm’s service concept. Sooner or later, an emphasis on quality will lead firms away from a strategy of passive flexibility.
A comparable set of problems, albeit in a completely different form, can be observed on the upper margin of the labour market.
3.2 The challenge to working-time regulation from active flexibility
The internal logic of active flexibility works in such a way as to encourage and put to use workers’ ability to anticipate changes in work requirements and to make the necessary adjustments relatively independently. Organisational approaches of this kind are most likely to be found in a work environment in which employees’
areas of responsibility are more broadly defined. They require firms to abandon the strategy of fragmenting the volume of work into all too small units of employment and working time and to rely instead on stable employment. The basic philosophy behind this mode of work organisation is the link between a clear quality orientation, employee commitment and customer focus.
In this context, the purpose of variable working-time systems is to produce temporal flexibility by relying, to a certain extent at least, on employees’ own ability to vary the length and scheduling of their own working times. Thus changes to working time are not decreed by management but come about with the active cooperation of the workforce, or are even made by employees themselves acting on their own initiative. They are, therefore, one element in a participatory mode of work organisation (EPOC Research Group 1997). In many companies in which management has adopted this paradigm and devolved decision-making powers to groups of employees, work scheduling is an important area of responsibility for the groups (Table 2). These firms have adopted this strategy in the expectation that employees’ job satisfaction will increase if they are given the opportunity to strike a better balance between the their own individual working time preferences and the firm’s operational requirements.
Table 2: The delegation of decision-making to groups of employees
In simpler production and service activities, employee involvement in work scheduling is in many cases fairly restricted, with management initially calculating manpower requirements and employees then putting down their own individual working times or agreeing them with their colleagues (in the retail trade we use the term "activation of passive flexibility" to denote such an approach). In areas with higher skill requirements, however, attempts have been made in some cases to go further, which employees being given total responsibility for work scheduling. If such an approach is to be successful, then the processing of orders must be decentralised and, if possible, delegated to teams constituted as profit centres. In some cases, management control of the time regime is eliminated and replaced by management by objectives. From this point, it is but a short step to a system of work organisation in which it is left up to the employees to decide the timeframe within which the agreed objective is to be achieved. Thus the board of VW, for example, recently proposed that the principle of "fixed performance - fixed wage - no fixed working time" should even
be applied to the mass production of cars, and declared that this would be a condition for further major investment in Germany (IG Metall Bezirk Hannover 2000).
Thus in delegating responsibility for work scheduling to employees, it is entirely conceivable that the recording of working time could be eliminated altogether. At this point, working time will be completely "informalised" and its boundaries fluid.
In Germany, such forms of working-time organisation are currently gaining ground under the title "working time on trust".
Of course, we are not actually dealing with trust here. In fact, what firms that have adopted "trust-based" forms of working-time organisation are really doing is pursuing the internal logic of the market orientation of work and working time to a particularly far-reaching conclusion. Risk and responsibility for the final product is transferred to teams and individual employees who have to prove themselves to customers inside and outside the firm. The employer no longer manages directly by decree but indirectly by establishing the conditions under which employees or teams operate in the market. Individual employees and their teams are required to behave as if they were self-employed. To quote Peters (1997), whose line of argument I am following here, they become "the dependent self-employed".
When dependent employees behave as if they were self-employed, their whole attitude to working-time regulation can change fundamentally. They begin to adopt an outlook that is not unknown to academic researchers. By eliminating soul-destroying routine and working to order, by making the substantive and organisational challenges harder, individuals really can be given greater opportunities to develop their own abilities and strengthen their self-confidence.
It can then seem reasonable to view working-time standards as a hindrance rather than protection.
For this reason, we cannot exclude the possibility that the diffusion of active flexibility, i.e. a combination of indirect management and variable working times, will set in train a process leading to the disintegration of working-time standards.
It is very difficult to prove or disprove this suspicion, particularly because the
"informalisation" of working time undermines all efforts to measure it.
Nevertheless, by drawing on some empirical findings on changes in working time in Germany, a country where working time is relatively tightly regulated, we can draw attention to a few symptoms that show that our suspicion should at least be taken seriously.
An initial, albeit general clue is provided by the increase in the share of full-time employees working long hours (Table 3). In this respect, Germany is merely reflecting a trend that can be observed in most EU member states. The most striking fact is that it is mainly men who are working long hours.
Table 3: Share of full-time employees who normally work 46 hours or more per week, as percentage of all full-time employees (1994, 1997)
Let us look in greater detail at one group of employees who work notoriously long hours, namely high-level white-collar workers, who account for more than one quarter of all white-collar workers in Germany. As the socio-economic panel data show, this occupational group was actually working even longer hours at the end of the 1990s, despite reductions in contractual working time, than at the time when the whole process of reducing the 40-hour week began (Figure 3). Thus the change in the working-time standard has not had a perceptible effect on the hours worked by this category of employees.
Figure 3: Average agreed and actual weekly working times for white-collar workers in high-level jobs with managerial responsibilities in Western Germany Now there is a statistical link between long working times and working-time fluctuations (although it does not permit any conclusions to be drawn on causal effects in one or the other direction). As a survey conducted by the IAT shows (Wagner 2000), almost 17% of all dependent employees stated in 1998 that the length of their weekly working time depended heavily on the daily or weekly workload. This proportion rises with income and qualification. Full-time employees whose working times vary considerably with workload tend to work longer than average hours (Table 4). At the same time, a higher than average share of these employees state that they are able to schedule their own working time, either independently or in consultation with their colleagues. Thus their increased time autonomy is accompanied by greater pressure to adjust their own time to the requirements of the company - a clear symptom of what we call active flexibility.
Table 4: Average length of and variation in actual weekly working times (dependent employees, figures in hours)
Since there are no comparable figures on working-time variations from the past, it is not possible to extrapolate any trends from these data. However, the problems likely to arise in future can be identified by considering how the fundamental elements of flexible working-time systems are shaped in company agreements. Several years ago, we investigated company agreements on variable working times in various industries (Lindecke/Lehndorff 1997). Around 40% of these agreements made no provision for dealing with employees’ time credits deposited on their working-time accounts after the end of the equalisation period. In a further third of the agreements, any such credits simply lapsed, and 10% made provision for employees to be compensated. When working times are variable, there is clearly a greater possibility of them being extended, covertly in the first instance, because some of the hours worked become to some extent invisible, hidden in a grey area of informal agreements between individual employees and their supervisors (or individual decisions by employees or
decisions taken within teams). This possibility is all the more likely to become probability the more job security depends on the success of individual employees or teams in winning out over internal and external competitors.
These symptoms do not suggest that variable working-time systems would be fundamentally incompatible with the maintenance of working-time standards and an effective system of working-time regulation. However, they do indicate that the flexibilisation and self-management of working time may well be paving the way for the gradual spread of specific characteristics of the working-time reality of high-level white-collar workers to other categories of employees.
3.3 Marginal phenomena or harbingers of the social polarisation of working time?
Part-time checkout operators in supermarkets with frequently changing work schedules and software engineers working longer than average hours that vary considerably with workload are examples of groups of workers whose working- time reality is even today influenced to only a limited extent - if at all - by working- time regulations. Both groups confront the market on an individual basis, and their working times are determined to a large extent by market fluctuations.
It may be that the trends that can be observed among these groups of employees will remain phenomena confined to the lower and upper margins of the labour market. And yet the changes in working time these groups have experienced are associated with two models of work organisation that are both becoming more widely diffused. Evidence of this, which should be interpreted with all due caution, is to be found in a representative survey of work organisation structures in Germany conducted by the IAT. At one extreme of the clusters that emerge from this survey is heteronomous individual work, while at the other are cooperative activities involving a high degree of participation.
Between 1993 and 1998, the number of employees at both extremes increased (in the first case from 26.6 to 28% and in the second from 9.1 to 11.9%;
Nordhause-Janz/Pekruhl 2000: 37). This gradual shift supports the view that the two variants of flexibility described here will in future affect more categories of employees.
If this assessment is a realistic one, then the symptoms outlined may be interpreted as indicating the risk of a creeping social polarisation of working time that in Europe has hitherto been confined to Great Britain. The evolution of working time in Great Britain, in which industry-wide or national collective agreements have played virtually no role (Rubery 1998), has long been characterised by a combination of particularly long working times, especially among men, and very short working times, especially among women (cf. Figure 1). "Underworking" at one extreme is the precondition for "overworking" at the other - and vice versa. If reproductive work and the distribution of income between households is also taken into account (Harvey 1999), it becomes clear
that the passive flexibility at one extreme is a function of the active flexibility at the other. The two poles are linked to each other via a "modernised" gender division of labour: "Self-managed time may only reinforce the status quo, it may lead women to adjust wage and domestic worktime to minimise disruptions in their "traditional" domestic and family obligations rather than create symmetry between men’s and women’s roles" (Cross 1993: 211).
This contrasts with development paths in other European countries, in which the distribution of working time has remained fundamentally the same and men’s and women’s working times are gradually converging (Lehndorff 1999c). The clearest example is Denmark, where full-time employment among women is rising while at the same time the standard weekly working time is falling (cf.
Figure 1). The reform of working-time regulation may play an important role in settling the decision between these two alternative development paths, the
"British" and the "Danish" paths. We now turn, finally, to the possible implications of such a reform, which will of course take completely different institutional forms depending on national conditions.
4 The search for new models of working-time regulation
As we stated at the outset, the symbiotic relationship between working time and work organisation, the interaction of corporate hierarchies and the collective negotiation of compromises between conflicting interests, has continued to be a central pillar of the established mode of working-time regulation. However, as work becomes increasingly market-oriented and the organisation of working time more individualised, the balance of power that has prevailed to date is now being undermined; working-time standards that are intended to have a protective effect are being circumvented. True, new symbiotic relationships between working time and work organisation are emerging in the passive and, particularly, active variants of flexible working-time organisation. However, they are based on a fundamental imbalance of power, and it is more likely that they will lead merely to the establishment of a more or less temporary time arrangement in the workplace rather than providing the basis for a sustainable and lasting social time arrangement.
This supposition is clearly well founded in the case of passive flexibility. Here, non-permanent arrangements are being established between, on the one hand, young people seeking nothing more than temporary jobs or women confined to the role of secondary earner and, on the other hand, firms whose product or service quality is such that they can dispense with committed, well-qualified workers. However, even in the case of active flexibility, it is questionable whether the time arrangements can be sustained as long as they go hand in hand with a trend towards longer working times and encourage a further polarisation of working times, earnings and life opportunities.
