ABSTRACT
Since the early 1990s, interest in the issue of part-time work has emerged with attempts to develop a more integrated single European market. The White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness, Employment (Commission of the European Communities 1993) has sought to encourage a more extensive use of flexible working time (Labour Research 1994:11), as one means of reducing unemployment in the community. However, concern has also arisen over the haphazard growth in part-time work which may encourage social dumping and/or a distortion of competition at the Community level. A major criticism of the development of part-time work has emphasised the disadvantageous conditions associated with this form of ‘atypical’ employment. In Britain criticism has focused on the way that hours thresholds affect the application of basic employment rights and social security entitlements: in 1988 over 2.1 million men and women were excluded from employment protection (Maier 1991), although a House of Lords’ ruling (3 March 1994) should help reduce the levels of discrimination somewhat in Britain. In France, where labour law and social security provisions offer protection to a larger number of part-timers (approximately 400,000 men and women were without protection in 1988 according to Maier 1991), greater emphasis is placed on other forms of discrimination: fewer promotion prospects, less convenient working hours, less functional flexibility and more repetitive tasks (Marimbert 1992).
