Studies In Quality Part-time Employment

By Sara Charlesworth and Jenny Chalmers (introduced by)

For employees, part-time work has the potential to generate additional income for individuals and households, act as a pathway between non-employment and full-time employment, and facilitate continued workforce attachment for individuals during periods when they attend to other responsibilities such as education and family.

This is collection of papers published in Labour & Industry were developed from presentations at a Quality of Part-time Employment Expert Workshop held at RMIT Centre for Applied Social Research in July 2004.

Issues of job quality, quantity of part-time work, caring responsibilities and part-time work and legal frameworks to ensure part-time work are covered.

The papers presented were:

The Changing Employment Relationship and the Implications for Quality Part-time Work

Jill Rubery, Kevin Ward and Damian Grimshaw

There is increasing pressure for work to be organised to meet the needs of employers to reduce costs and increase work intensity and to match the time preferences of consumers for the provision of services. This promotes a fragmented and variable pattern of part-time working that is at odds with the need to reconcile the demands of work and family.

Exploring Job Quality and Part-time Work in Australia

John Burgess

Highlights the construction and measurement of part-time work and its broad features within the Australian context. Then Burgess explores the important question of the nature of job quality, and specifically the quality of part-time jobs. He argues that the gap separating part-time from full-time jobs can constitute the starting point for addressing part-time job quality.

Part-time Work and Caring Responsibilities in Australia: towards an assessment of job quality

Jenny Chalmers, Iain Campbell and Sara Charlesworth

Part-time work (for women) is often put forward as a solution to the problems of balancing paid work and caring responsibilities. This assessment is too shallow. It neglects the crucial issue of the quality of the part-time job. Poor quality part-time work may worsen the problems of work and family imbalance rather than contribute to the solution. Good quality part-time work is the main path forward.

Work and Care: New Legal Mechanisms for Adaptation

Jill Murray

There are a number of legal developments that are designed to help workers adapt their jobs in order to care for others, particularly in the European Union. The new legal developments considered are the creation of a specific category of leave to attend to care emergencies, a broadening of the legal definitions of those who may be cared for, and improved access to and quality of part-time work. The paper concludes that, without legal intervention, the task of self-regulating work and care is unnecessarily burdensome to those, chiefly women, who undertake it.

Quality Part-time Work: Can Law Provide a Framework?

Beth Gaze

Explores existing legal mechanisms for women to seek access to part-time work in order to reconcile their family responsibilities with their work. The main avenue used has been anti-discrimination law, where women have claimed that an employer's refusal to allow them to return to work from maternity leave part-time is indirect discrimination. Despite the success of several cases on this ground, there have been other cases which suggest it is not a firm foundation for an entitlement. Even if it was firmly established, it is inadequate, as it does not assist fathers who seek part-time work, and it is vague and difficult to access. Nor does it ensure that the part-time work available will be of good quality and that women will still be taken seriously in the workforce. The author concludes that specific reforms similar to the "right to request" flexible work provision in the UK would be strongly preferable.

(Labour & Industry, vol. 15, no. 3, April 2005)