New working time arrangements lead to more full-time jobs

During 1998 the number of full-time jobs in the Swedish municipalities has increased for the first time in the 1990s, according to a report published in November. This can probably be attributed to new working time arrangements.

Around 44% of monthly-paid employees in the Swedish municipalities are part-time workers - many of whom work part time involuntarily. The average monthly full-time wage for a blue-collar worker in the municipalities is around SEK 14,000, which means that it is hard to make a living from part-time employment.

However, according to a report from the Swedish Association of Swedish Authorities (Kommunförbundet) published in November 1998, the number of full-time monthly-paid employees is now increasing and the number of part-timers decreasing for the first time since the Association started to compile statistics in 1991. Representatives of Kommunförbundet and of the Swedish Municipal Workers' Union (Svenska Kommunalarbetareförbundet, Kommunal) believe that this can be attributed to new, more flexible, working time arrangements.

Traditionally, trade unions have been opposed to any system of so-called "split turns", whereby employees work a couple of hours in the morning and then have a long break before going back to work in the evening, and each employee has also had fixed working hours. However, the workload in the activities run by the municipalities - childcare, geriatric care, social care etc - varies greatly during the day. As a consequence, the employers have chosen to offer part-time instead of full-time appointments, in order to be able to adapt the size of the workforce to the variations in the workload.

Now, different forms of new working time arrangements have been piloted in several municipalities. One example is where the employees themselves book their working hours on an empty schedule and agree among themselves as to who is going to work at what time, so that the workforce required is always at hand. Another solution is that only a certain proportion (75%-80%) of the working hours of a particular individual are fixed, with the remainder being utilised in a more flexible way.

Both Kommunförbundet and Kommunal have welcomed this development and hope that it will continue.