ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter has been on the ‘decent work deficit’ between workers’ preferred and actual working time arrangements. If this deficit is thought of as ‘a gap between the world that we work in and the hopes that people have for a better life’ (ILO 2001a: 8), it suggests that ‘decent working time’ can be promoted by increasing the choice and influence of individuals over their working hours and schedules. This kind of choice can be enhanced and realized in two related ways. First, increasing the number of available working time options is in itself a way of allowing workers a choice over how they arrange their working lives including how they balance paid work with their caring and other commitments. In addition, working time policies can ensure that workers’ preferences are realized by allowing workers the opportunity to exercise a direct influence over the length and arrangement of their working hours. This ‘individual influence’ approach recognizes that decent working time has a procedural as well as a substantive dimension and cannot therefore be determined solely at the macro level, but instead must involve identifying and promoting the substantive outcomes which workers themselves need and prefer.
