Half A Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market

5. Implications of the Distinction Between Good and Bad Part-Time Jobs

Implications of the Distinction Between Good and Bad Part-Time Jobs 5 • TYPOLOGIES SUCH AS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SECondary and retention, or "bad" and "good," part-time jobs classify the world, sorting messy events into neat boxes. A new typology generally offers a fresh look at something we had previously thought we had known. But that classification scheme's value is greater if it not only describes but also explains. The secondary/retention dichotomy can indeed help to explain a number of the systematic features of part-time employment . This chapter addresses two such features. When managers speak of the advantages and dis4dvantages of part-time work, they sometimes appear to contradict each other flatly, citing utterly opposite advantages. The dichotomy between secondary and retention part-time work demonstrates that there in fact is no contradiction-just two utterly different types of part-time jobs. Another puzzle is the coexistence of involuntary part-time and involuntary full-time work. But by taking into account the difference between bad and good part-time jobs, we can not only explain this coexistence but also predict with some success where each of the two involuntary groups will cluster in the economy. Finally, although extrapolating beyond the range of one's data is always risky, it seems important to consider the usefulness of the secondary and retention categories outside the retail and insurance industries. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the possibilities of generalizing this typology to other industries and extending it to accommodate other forms of part-time employment. 70 Copyrighted Material The Distinction Between Good and Bad Jobs "Hiding the Dog," and Other Advantages and Disadvantages ofPart-Time Workers 71 "It's easier to hide a dog that's a part-timer than a full-timer," a Pittsburgh supermarket manager told me when asked about the advantages of hiring a part-time worker. Management representatives suggested a wide, wide range of pluses and minuses to hiring part-timers. The responses ranged from commonsensical to seemingly irrational, from cynical to idealistic, from bureaucratic to creative. But running through most of the responses like a backbone-only occasionally visible but constantly shaping the contours and tensions of the part-timelfull-time tradeoff-was the secondary/retention distinction. Employers reap markedly different benefits and costs from retention and secondary part-time work because they bundle very different job characteristics with part-time hours. Previous Research on the Pros and Cons ofPart-Time Workers Some of the researchers who have tackled this question of advantages and disadvantages of part-time workers have simply compiled lists. For example , Hermine Zagat Levine (1987) surveyed 73 employers who used permanent part-timers and found that the advantages they most often cited were, in declining order, better coverage of the workplace, reduced labor costs, reduced benefit costs, reduced overtime costs, and better work schedules. The disadvantage most often cited was higher turnover. Managers told Stanley Nollen, Brenda Eddy, and Virginia Martin (1978) that part-time employment often yields greater productivity and requires lower compensation but entails more difficult supervision. However , in their sample these considerations were not decisive in explaining where part-time employment is used. Nor did Nollen and his colleagues find organizational climate a primary determinant of part-time use. Instead , they concluded that technology and the pattern of demand and output over time are important in determining where part-time workers are used. Susan Christopherson (1988), reviewing a corpus of case study literature , placed the Nollen et al. findings in a historical and sectoral context . She noted that up to the 1960s part-time work was limited to certain "backward" sectors of the economy (agriculture, household service, retail trade, and so on) or to "back-up" rolls for full-time labor, filling in the spaces that full-time workers could not. However, firms in a variety of other industries then began to allot part-time employment a central, integral place in their labor force. Christopherson argued that part-time Copyrighted Material 72 Chapter 5 workers are part of a growing periphery of labor that absorbs demand fluctuations. In summary, earlier studies have pointed to two main motivations for using part-time employment: solving scheduling issues involving coverage and fluctuating demand, and reducing labor costs. Evidence from the Retail and Insurance Interviews Manager responses in my interviews repeat these earlier key findings, but go beyond mere replication to offer a much richer picture of...