Of all the forces with the potential to flatter Ireland’s unemployment rate (not that the latest rate of 13.1 per cent could be described as flattering), arguably the most worrying is the shift towards part-time working. Migration flows and declining participation rates can be reversed. However, if the greater prevalence of part-time employment in the labour market reflects a greater casualisation of labour, the impact on our working lives could well outlast this recession.
Between 1998 and 2008, the percentage of people in employment who worked part-time hovered in the tight range of 16-18 per cent, Kieran Walsh of the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Wednesday. Going back further in time, the proportion of part-timers in the workforce has also more or less stuck to these levels. Now it has increased to 22 per cent: more than one in five people in employment work part-time. This, said Walsh, was an “interesting figure”, and one that signals a change in the make-up of employment.
The CSO’s data for 2009 employment trends, contained in the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS), gives the latest snapshot. While the number of people in full-time employment fell by 193,200 in the year to the fourth quarter of 2009, there was an increase of 26,400 in part-time employment over the period. The diverging trends suggest that employees are searching for any work that they can get, noted Goodbody Stockbrokers. “Any job will do,” its analysts remarked.
What’s that you say? Working part-time sounds like a waking dream come true? Indeed, many part-time workers, such as people easing their way into retirement or the parents of young children, do so by choice (although employers are not obliged to offer part-time positions to workers, a fact that helps limit promotional opportunities). Others, such as workers who have accepted short time in order to avoid redundancies may otherwise retain their employment conditions: part-time for everyone may be better than full-time for some and zero hours for those who are pushed out the door. But for the most part, this increased desperation can only work in favour of flexibility-demanding employers and against the long-term interests of employees.
Thanks to an EU directive on the matter – transposed into Irish law in 2001 – Irish employers are not officially permitted to treat part-time workers less favourably than a comparable full-time employee when it comes to the conditions of their employment (with some latitude on pensions). In practice, however, part-timers are often ghettoised into particular roles so that their jobs are not comparable to those of full-timers: less favourable treatment, including designation as a “casual” worker, ensues.
The CSO’s latest National Employment Survey – the most in-depth study of workplace conditions – found that full-time workers in October 2007 earned an average of €21.17 per hour, while their part-time equivalents earned an average hourly rate of €15.40.
The gap in pay can be partly explained by the concentration of part-time workers in lower-paid sectors. But it also reflects the fact that part-timers have less bargaining power than full-time employees. This is literally the case: the CSO asked QNHS respondents if they belonged to a trade union: 37 per cent of full-time employees did, but just 20 per cent of part-timers had the cushion of an organisation that will bargain on their behalf.
Time will tell if the part-time rate will stick at its current level, increase further, or fall back down to 16-18 per cent as the labour market recovers. My guess is that employers will prove unwilling to sacrifice the crisis-era levels of flexibility they have managed to win from workers. But another possibility is that the generation of enforced part-time workers could become so blissfully accustomed to their enviable work-life balance that they shun employers’ demands to return to full-time labour - and the cost of living is low enough for that to be affordable. I think I might be dreaming again.
