Level of Knowledge and Skills in Part-Time Jobs
CHAPTER 1
THE PROBLEM AND A REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Part-time employment has been publicly praised as a tool for promoting market flexibility and reorganizing working time, for family policy and for redistributing existing employment. For employers, a part-time option can permit greater flexibility in responding to market requirements by increasing capacity or extending opening hours. Working part-time may offer the chance of a better balance between working life and other activities such as family responsibilities, training, leisure or civic activities, as well as making it easier to enter the labor market or retire from employment. The growth of part-time work may reduce the number of job-seekers (Ilo, 1997). Further, Gasparini et al, (2000) this is the rise in the rate of part-time work relative to full-time employment due to intensification of international competition, new production methods and forms of organization, increased unemployment, rising female participation rates and more diverse working-time demands from the workforce all contribute to this increase (Fagan, 2003).
Indeed, the employment guidelines and recommendations explicitly encourage the social partners and public authorities to foster the development of part-time work and other flexible working arrangements as a means of modernizing the organization of work.
According to the European Framework Agreement on part-time work, concluded in 1997 among the European social partners, the term ‘part-time worker’ refers to ‘‘an employee whose normal hours of work, calculated on a weekly basis or on average over a period of employment of up to one year, are less than the normal hours of work of a comparable full-time worker. The term part-time worker defined as any employed person whose normal hours of work are less than those of comparable full-time workers. The reason both cases mention the concept of a comparable worker is due to the fact that the number of hours per week or per month that
THE PROBLEM AND A REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Part-time employment has been publicly praised as a tool for promoting market flexibility and reorganizing working time, for family policy and for redistributing existing employment. For employers, a part-time option can permit greater flexibility in responding to market requirements by increasing capacity or extending opening hours. Working part-time may offer the chance of a better balance between working life and other activities such as family responsibilities, training, leisure or civic activities, as well as making it easier to enter the labor market or retire from employment. The growth of part-time work may reduce the number of job-seekers (Ilo, 1997). Further, Gasparini et al, (2000) this is the rise in the rate of part-time work relative to full-time employment due to intensification of international competition, new production methods and forms of organization, increased unemployment, rising female participation rates and more diverse working-time demands from the workforce all contribute to this increase (Fagan, 2003).
Indeed, the employment guidelines and recommendations explicitly encourage the social partners and public authorities to foster the development of part-time work and other flexible working arrangements as a means of modernizing the organization of work.
According to the European Framework Agreement on part-time work, concluded in 1997 among the European social partners, the term ‘part-time worker’ refers to ‘‘an employee whose normal hours of work, calculated on a weekly basis or on average over a period of employment of up to one year, are less than the normal hours of work of a comparable full-time worker. The term part-time worker defined as any employed person whose normal hours of work are less than those of comparable full-time workers. The reason both cases mention the concept of a comparable worker is due to the fact that the number of hours per week or per month that