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262 13 WORK HOURS MISMATCH IN THE UNITED STATES AND AUSTRALIA Robert Drago and Mark Wooden Many academics and practitioners are urging employers to provide workplace options that allow their employees to reduce the number of hours they are required to work. For example, Hewlett and Luce’s (2005) study of highly educated women concludes that businesses need to create reduced-hours positions for women, and particularly new mothers, if they are to retain their positions as valued employees. For academics, Drago and Williams (2000) promote the notion of a half-time tenure track to permit academics to downshift their academic responsibilities when family demands are high, and return to full-time schedules when family demands lessen. For older workers, Leslie and Janson (2005) highlight the importance of allowing reduced-hours opportunities for those seeking phased retirement. Calls for reduced hours correspond to evidence of a time problem,in which many employees working long hours prefer but cannot obtain fewer hours, and many employees working short hours (working thirty hours or fewer a week) prefer but cannot obtain longer hours (Jacobs and Gerson 2004). This time argument implies a shortage of medium-hour jobs;1 this preference of work hours appears in several studies of the United States (Drago 2000; Jacobs and Gerson 2004). In each case, the absolute number of employees who work long hours is larger than the group of employees who work short hours. Additionally, several studies have conducted crossnational analyses that examine the number of hours worked and the preferences of employees (e.g., Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] 1998, 2004; Rubery, Smith, and Fagan 1998). This chapter provides a quantitative analysis that compares data from the United States and Australia on both the hours worked and the hours employees prefer. WORK HOURS MISMATCH IN THE UNITED STATES AND AUSTRALIA 263 Australia and the United States exhibit striking similarities: both are part of the developed world, have democratic governments, and are highly integrated into the global economy. Both nations have witnessed an increasing diversity of family forms, a rise in delayed and denied childbearing, and continuing gender inequality (Drago, Scutella, and Pirretti 2007). Jacobs and Gerson (2000) found that among nine developed countries, Australia and the United States have the highest proportions of employees reporting working long hours each week (at least fifty hours per week).2 This suggests that comparisons of these two nations should yield similar results, but the institutional responses to these issues may be different. For example, in Australia, there are governmental policies that provide attractive part-time opportunities for mothers, and other policies that are supportive of lowwage employees. However, in the United States, several studies show a more equal division of labor in the household, but higher rates of full-time labor force participation of women, especially among mothers with children under the age of eighteen . This chapter specifically examines which of these two nations faces the most serious issues of time management, and why differences between the two countries may exist. Time Mismatch The notion of a shortage of medium-hour jobs—those within the range of thirty to forty hours per week—fits the norm of the forty-hour week in the United States and of the thirty-eight-hour week in Australia. Many employees would choose these hours, but are forced into jobs with either longer or shorter hours jobs than they desire , and consequently they tend to view themselves as either over- or underworked. But why would employers provide fewer medium-hour jobs than employees’desire? Several dynamics may be at work. In a perfectly competitive labor market, employees who desire shorter or longer work hours should be able to negotiate these desires with their employer, or switch employers if they cannot achieve their goals. Various cost factors might make labor markets less than perfectly competitive, and generate a time disconnect in the process . Fixed costs of employment are relevant here. For example, providing an office or equipment, family health insurance coverage, pensions, or vacations based on years of service all drive up the fixed costs of hiring and retaining employees. Employers have an incentive to spread these fixed costs over a larger number of work hours per employee, and thereby generate the demand for overwork. Fixed costs might also affect employees, as in the case of liability insurance premiums for medical doctors in the United States. Since these premiums can run to tens of thousands of dollars per year...

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