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Employees' and Employers' Preferences for Working Time Reduction and Working Time Differentiation

A Study of the 36-Hour Working Week in the Dutch Banking Sector

University of Amsterdam

Working time reduction is high on the political agenda of the European Union and its member states. In Dutch banks, reduced working time (RWT) was agreed in collective bargaining; however, employers are able to exclude employees from RWT. A total of 82 per cent of employees were assigned RWT. Using large-scale survey data based on 17,308 employees, regression analyses were performed to investigate which employees had favourable RWT attitudes and which employees were assigned RWT. With regard to employee attitudes, the maximizing income hypothesis was mostly supported. Low-income, breadwinning and part-time employees were less in favour of RWT. The maximizing non-working hours hypothesis is only partly supported. Female employees had more favourable attitudes to RWT, but this showed little correlation with the presence of young children. Supervisors had less favourable attitudes to RWT. There was little support for the minimizing working hours hypothesis. Attitudes of employees in redundant jobs hardly differed from other employees, which is surprising given that RWT is aimed at work sharing. In explaining employers' strategies, this article shows that RWT was not assigned at random; its primary aim was to strengthen the banks' long-term transformation from administrative bureaucracies to commercial organizations. The banks did not seem to be aiming for a short-term increase in productivity as RWT was not assigned less frequently to insufficiently staffed departments or more frequently to employees in redundant jobs. Finally, the labour market hypothesis is barely supported. Only one bank assigned RWT less frequently to jobs that were in short supply.

Key Words: bureaucracy • collective bargaining • employee attitudes • increase in productivity • large-scale survey • maximizing income • part-time employee • work-sharing

Acta Sociologica, Vol. 46, No. 1, 69-82 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0001699303046001005


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