ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the broader European picture, using material from the Economic Community (EC) Labour Force Survey and the Price Waterhouse Cranfield Project (PWCS), a survey of 5500 employers across 10 countries, covering public and private sectors as well as services and manufacturing. It discusses the differences in the scale of part-time work in 10 European countries. The chapter considers explanations from the demand side, the supply side, and in relation to institutional differences. It also considers the patterns of change in the use of part-time workers in the firms covered by the study, seeking to identify whether there are distinct country as against sector or demand trends. The chapter analyzes the degree to which the organizations covered in the study use part-time work as a substitute for other forms of flexible labour or alternatively the degree to which "flexibilization tendencies" cluster in a distinct set of "flexible firms", using part-time contracts as a complement to other forms of "precarious" labour.
