Working time in the UK – developments and debates (original) (raw)
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Negotiating Work-Life Balance: Working Time Preferences and the European Working Time Directive
2006
This thesis examines why working time preferences differ between workers and nations, and explains the effect of working time regulation and working time flexibility on negotiating work-life balance. In five separate sections the following working time issues are examined: the number of hours worked by workers in Europe; factors affecting individual working time preferences; how working time preferences are negotiated in the national industrial relations systems of Sweden, France and the United Kingdom; how the institutions of the European Union have influenced working time negotiations through the Working Time Directive; and the benefits and practices available to organisations implementing working time flexibility. Broadly this paper views working time preferences as being a highly personal and influenced by factors such as wages, taxation, culture (national and workplace) and non-work responsibilities. It is argued that negotiating a preferred working time pattern is essential to achieving work-life balance and when such a balance is achieved, workers are more healthy, motivated and committed to their employer. Essentially this provides an incentive for businesses to voluntarily implement working time flexibility beyond the regulatory standards.
2002
Given the underdeveloped attention to political and policy origins of aggregate work time patterns in the work-time literature, and the lack of any significant attention to work-time in the broader comparative political economy literature, this paper has pursues a broad mandate: to bring more politics into the study of work-time, and work-time into the study of politics. Using data allowing better comparison among OECD countries, we argue that study of working time needs to consider annual hours per employee and per working-age person, shaped by a range of social as well as direct work-time policies. We also argue that union interest in worktime reduction is more ambiguous than customarily supposed, with union interests likely mediated by a range of other conditions, especially female labor market participation and female union membership. Finally, we argue that attention to party systems and policy clusters should begin with consideration of Social Democratic, Liberal and Christian...
Working Time Flexibility and Family Life in the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden
This paper focuses on working time flexibility and family life in the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden based on comparable survey findings carried out in Spring 2001. In addition, a more detailed analysis of the UK survey findings is presented. The paper considers working time arrangements in the three countries, the part-time workforce and the experience of conflict between work and family life. The UK is found to be distinctive in the greater dispersion of working hours and in the specific gendered division of working time. The UK is also distinctive in the long hours that fathers work, in the high proportions of parents who wish to reduce their working hours in order to spend more time with their families (or conversely chose to work part-time hours in order to meet domestic commitments), in the extent to which long working hours impact on family life and finally, in the association between work flexibility and lack of employment protection for some female part-time workers.
Patterns of Working Time and Work Hour Fit in Europe
2018
The requirements for more flexible and lean forms of production that are able to adapt to demand cycles, both quantitatively and functionally, are common in all advanced economies. At the same time, the flexibilization of working times and work places has become an increasing focus for the analysis of quality of work and life (i.e. work-life balance). This chapter approaches flexibilization as a transition from an industrial to a post-industrial working time regime. The new post-industrial working time regime is usually characterized by deregulation of collective norms, diversification of the length (short and long hours) and pattern of working time (unsocial hours), increasing work intensity and time squeeze, and blurring of the limits of working and leisure time. The chapter discusses flexibility of working times and places from both employers and employees perspectives. In addition, by using European Working Condition Surveys from three decades, this chapter examines to what exte...
Reshaping EU Working-Time Regulation: Towards a More Sustainable Regime
European Labour Law Journal , 2016
The European Commission's 2015 Roadmap on work-life balance urges a comprehensive policy and regulatory approach as essential to addressing the interrelated goals of reconciling work and family, sharing of care work between women and men, and attaining substantive gender equality. However, the EU's key instrument setting 'normal' hours of work standards, the Working Time Directive, is absent amongst the measures identified as central to such a comprehensive approach. Attributing this omission in part to the Directive's historic evolution, its controversial and unsettled status, and its apparent gender 'neutrality', this article argues that work-life balance strategies must incorporate standard working-time considerations if they are to be effective; likewise, a more meaningful engagement with and the advancement of work-family reconciliation and equality goals is crucial for the Working Time Directive's continued relevance. Failing such a more obvious articulation between the two sets of policies, a number of goals currently on the EU agenda will be difficult to attain, as supporting caregivers and redistributing unpaid work between women and men, but also objectives of active aging and Europe's long-term social sustainability require the development of more sustainable work and working-time practices.