Ed,
Yes, a most interesting article. It's sad that there isn't far more
part-time working.
And there's the matter of home working, too, which isn't taking off as it
was widely forecast a decade or so ago. A recent British Telecom survey
suggested that there are about 1.5million people working from home in
England, whereas there is a potential, so say the experts, for at least 5
million.
I wonder a great deal about why there isn't more home working. About a half
of us along our road work from home. We often bump into one another as we
walk our dogs or stroll to fetch our newspapers from the shop and watch the
hundreds of cars flashing by us as they go to work. Well within 50 yards
from my house there are a travel writer, a property developer, a
calligrapher, a TV set designer, a cartoonist for a national daily, an
advertising man, a special-events organiser, a sculptor, a management
consultant, a dealer in antique furniture, a professional pianist, a
composer of film music, as well as me, dabbling in architectural
illustration and music publishing but best known for writing long messages
on Futurework.
But we're not representative of the general population, obviously, and we
all happen to be self-employed, too. If some of us happen to employ others,
we make sure that they are self-employed, too. Otherwise, we should be
harangued by the tax authorities and have to do immense amounts of clerical
work every month in subtracting tax, insurance, pensions, pay benefits, and
goodness knows what else from their pay packets. In fact, many of us are
already harangued periodically by the tax people because they don't like
freelancers or self-employed people because it makes tax-gathering harder
for them to do.
I think that the bureaucratic overhead -- much the same for a part-time
worker as a full-timer -- is one of the reasons why managements avoid
part-time employees. And, as for the potential self-employed, there is the
constant threat of being taken to court by the tax people for not
conforming to normal employer-employee conventions. Only last week the tax
authorities won a legal action against a software firm that used
self-employed programmers on contract, having taken the case all the way up
to the House of Lords on appeal.
If it wasn't for our highly complex taxation structure I'm sure that
there'd be vastly more part-time and self-employed workers. The sheer
variety of occupations in modern times would suggest this. Perhaps one day
we'll have a sensible taxation system such as a straight sales tax or a
property tax and we'll see a much more flexible job structure -- which
would be much to the benefit of the economy. It would also certainly
decrease the numbers of the jobless. But that's unlikely to happen in the
near future because a simpler taxation system wouldn't need anywhere near
the numbers of tax gatherers. We mustn't have civil service redundancies
must we?
Keith H
At 15:36 09/07/01 -0400, you wrote:
> & As the article suggests, it doesn't always work out way it was
>planned. When you are not under contract, you are not working at all,
>unless you are helping to write a proposal, which is unpaid work.
>Typically, that is what happens when one works under contract. I don't know
>much about labour law, but it is probable that some things are going to
>have to be rethought and rewritten if, as is likely, there is a
>significant movement from full-time to part-time work. Ed Weick
> Working part time no bed of roses: study
>B.C. researchers discover downside VIRGINIA GALT
>WORKPLACE REPORTER
>& Mail Part-time work is not as idyllic as it may appear to envious
>full-timers, according to new Canadian research published this week in the
>Harvard Business Review. Professionals who work part-time must go to
>extreme lengths to make the arrangements acceptable to their employers and
>colleagues, wrote British Columbia academics Vivien Corwin, Thomas
>Lawrence and Peter Frost. A common pitfall is the tendency to compress a
>full-time workload into part-time hours -- for part-time pay, they found.
>Even with the compressed schedule, however, work still encroaches on what
>is supposed to be family time. "It is not necessarily a panacea for
>striking a balance between work and life," the researchers wrote. The
>researchers interviewed a mother who confessed to sending an ill child to
>school in order to attend business meetings and prove her "commitment."
>They also interviewed a co-worker irked by a part-time colleague who would
>swan out of the office at noon on Wednesdays, wishing everyone else a good
>weekend. "She didn't win many friends," observed Ms. Corwin, a consultant
>in leadership development and human resource management and an associate
>faculty member at Royal Roads University in Victoria. "Many part-timers
>are forced to work longer hours than they contracted for, and many suffer
>under the second-class status of part-time work," the researchers found as
>part of a wide-ranging study on how employees in Canada and the United
>States balance the competing demands of work and home life. "At the same
>time, part-time work makes organizations uncomfortable. It raises obvious
>questions about who will pick up the slack," they wrote in their Harvard
>Business Review article. Nonetheless, an estimated 10 per cent of
>professionals work part-time -- primarily for family reasons -- and those
>interviewed by the B.C. research team reported that the tradeoffs are
>worth it. Ms. Corwin, who is expecting her first baby next month, said in
>an interview that her research was inspired by personal interest as well
>as an academic interest in what makes part-time arrangements work for both
>employers and employees. "Every successful part-timer in our study had
>some trick for staying visible in the organization despite the many hours
>spent away from work," the researchers wrote. They stay in touch by e-mail
>or voice mail and do not discourage calls at home if a work issue comes
>up, Ms. Corwin said. Ms. Corwin, Mr. Lawrence, an associate professor at
>the University of Victoria's faculty of business, and Mr. Frost, a
>professor of organizational behaviour at the University of British
>Columbia's faculty of commerce, interviewed 30 professionals who work
>part-time, including engineers, financial analysts, information technology
>specialists and consultants. They also sought the views of 28 of their
>managers and co-workers. It takes "time, energy and creativity" to make a
>part-time arrangement work, and the onus is usually on the employee. The
>most successful part-timers are upfront about their priorities and are
>clear about when they are available for work and when they are not.
>Successful part-timers also demonstrate to their employers "that the work
>is still getting done, well and on time," they wrote, and they often have
>a champion in senior management. Lesya Balych-Cooper of Bank of Montreal
>is one such champion of flexible work arrangements, including permanent
>part-time. "It takes a lot of hard work between the manager and the
>employee to find something that fits," said Ms. Balych-Cooper, BMO's
>vice-president of employee programs and workplace equality. However, there
>is a business case to be made for helping employees balance their work and
>family lives, she said an in interview. "It increases motivation and it
>improves job performance." The B.C. researchers report that many managers
>are not as receptive as Ms. Balych-Cooper. "Adding part-time professionals
>to the staff definitely complicates a manager's life," they wrote.
>"Suddenly, you are called upon to determine what constitutes a fair
>schedule and workload." Most part-time arrangements are still ad hoc, many
>professionals working part-time report that they are overlooked when
>bonuses are handed out, and many feel "out of the loop" professionally.
>"Most part-timers told us they accepted the consequences of their status as
> part of the deal. But they also said that sometimes their confidence was
>eroded, and they questioned whether the arrangement was worth the effort."
>
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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