Research examines attitudes and behaviour on labour flexibility
Published: 27 May 1999
In April and May 1999, two research studies were published on the attitudes of Italians, especially young people, towards labour flexibility. The studies indicate that there is widespread willingness to accept forms of "non-standard" and flexible work. The results can usefully be compared with the data from a recent survey by Istat on the actual implementation of labour flexibility.
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In April and May 1999, two research studies were published on the attitudes of Italians, especially young people, towards labour flexibility. The studies indicate that there is widespread willingness to accept forms of "non-standard" and flexible work. The results can usefully be compared with the data from a recent survey by Istat on the actual implementation of labour flexibility.
April and May 1999 saw publication of the results of two research studies on attitudes in Italy towards labour flexibility. The first is a study by Censis, the social studies research institute, on changes in the use of working time in Italy. This study does not restrict itself to analysis of the interviewees' opinions, but also investigates the extent to which certain types of flexibility are used by firms. The second study was commissioned by the Cgil trade union confederation from the Fondazione Corazzin in Venice and investigates the attitudes of young people to work.
The transformation of work
According to the Censis study - Una società permanentemente attiva? Verifica di uno scenario (1989-99), 1999 - the proportion of workers with "non-standard" working hours has increased significantly in the past 10 years. Of particular interest is the finding - see table 1 below - that there has been a simultaneous increase in share of the labour force working fewer than 35 hours per week (with an almost 4% increase among dependent employees) and of the proportion of people working more than 46 hours per week (with an growth of 2% among employees and of more than 5% among self-employed workers).
| Weekly hours of work | Agriculture % (change from 1988) | Industry % (change from 1988) | Other activities % (change from 1988) | Total % (change from 1988) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-35 | 21.7 (-1.7) | 7.6 ( 2.1) | 22.7 ( 5.6) | 17.0 ( 3.9) |
| 36-40 | 44.1 (-3.0) | 76.8 (-4.0) | 61.9 (-6.7) | 66.8 (-5.4) |
| 41-45 | 10.2 ( 0.3) | 6.7 ( 0.6) | 5.3 (-1.0) | 6.0 (-0.4) |
| 46 and more | 24.2 ( 4.6) | 9.0 ( 1.4) | 10.1 ( 2.1) | 10.1 ( 1.7) |
Source: Censis 1999.
As regards types of employment contract, part-time jobs have increased significantly in the past 10 years. The percentage of workers in services on part-time contracts has increased from 5.2% to 8.3%. Moreover, an increasing number of those interviewed by Censis declare that they are willing to consider non-full-time employment: the percentage of those stating that they are willing to accept only a full-time job has fallen from 32.1% in 1995 to 27.4% in 1998. Finally, fully 63% of interviewees say that they are willing to accept telework, utilising the opportunities offered by the development of new information and communication technologies.
The aim of the Cgil study - "I giovani e il lavoro che cambia", Tarcisio Tarquini, Cgil-Fondazione Corazzin, in Supplemento di Rassegna Sindacale, no. 15, 4 May (1999)- is to investigate the attitudes to work among young people aged between 15 and 29. The results show widespread acceptance by young people of elements of mobility and flexibility in order to find a job. Slightly more than a third of interviewees (34.3%) declare that they are willing to move to another part of the country in search for employment, and to accept a lower initial wage in exchange for vocational training. Only 14.0% are unwilling to accept either possibility. Perhaps predictably, the propensity to accept flexibility is closely correlated with the local unemployment rate. Indeed, the largest percentage of young people who reject both alternatives live in the North-East of Italy (27.9%), which is the area of the country with the lowest level of unemployment, while young people willing to accept both mobility and the wage/training exchange are more numerous in the South and the islands, where they reach 43.4% of total respondents.
As the authors of the study emphasise, however, this is not a matter of uncritical acceptance of whatever form of labour flexibility - see table 2 below. Young people seemingly prefer "work-entry flexibility": in order to combat unemployment, the majority declare themselves in favour of lower wages for newly-hired workers (63.1%), a greater use of temporary labour (67.2%), greater freedom for firms in hiring (86.8%) and support for part-time work (86.8%), while the introduction of the 35-hour working week, with a proportional reduction in wages, is advocated by little over half of the interviewees (51.1%). Only around one-third (35.6%) agree with relaxing restrictions on dismissals in order to increase "work-exit flexibility". Moreover, the interviewees are in favour of an active employment policy aimed at fostering demand for labour: 70.8% support economic incentives to firms taking on new workers, and 91.1% declare that taxes on labour should be reduced. This is an attitude that the writers of the report label "flexicurity": that is, a willingness to accept work flexibility while still maintaining a certain amount of protection and job security.
| Policies | % support |
|---|---|
| Relaxing restrictions on dismissals by firms | 35.6 |
| Reducing working hours to 35 a week, with proportional reduction in wages | 51.1 |
| Lower wages for newly-hired workers | 63.1 |
| Encouraging temporary agency work | 67.2 |
| No taxes on firms in the first two years after recruitment | 70.8 |
| Granting firms greater freedom when hiring workers | 86.6 |
| Supporting part-time work | 86.8 |
| Reducing taxes on labour | 91.1 |
Source: Cgil-Fondazione Corazzin 1999.
A second significant feature to emerge from the Cgil-Fondazione Corazzin research concerns trade union membership and assessment of trade union action. Among respondents, the union membership rate is 15.4%, and the proportion increases with age (from 4.2% among the youngest interviewees to 19.9% among those aged between 25 and 29). This percentage is less than half the overall figure for union membership, which another recent study by the Fondazione Corazzin has estimated at 41.9% among employees.
However, one cannot say that young union members represent only a marginal proportion of the total, if one considers that more than 20% of the active members of Cgil, Cisl and Uil are under 30 years old, and that the three union confederations garner almost two-thirds of all young people's enrolments to trade unions (64.3%). In any event, the difficulties of the unions in recruiting members from outside their traditional catchment areas is confirmed by the typical profile of the young trade union member: in the majority of cases he or she lives in the North, is a blue-collar worker with a relatively low level of formal education, and works in a company with more than 50 employees. As for assessments of union activity, 44% of the interviewees regard it as useful, and 47.9% declare that they trust the unions (while 63.5% affirm they trust employers' organisations). On the other hand, 45% state that the unions are ineffectual, and this attitude is shared also by 38.6% of union members.
The Istat study on flexibility
The figures on attitudes towards labour flexibility - an aspect which concerns the "supply" of labour flexibility - can be usefully compared with those on the concrete implementation of labour flexibility measures, which in a sense reflect trends in the "demand" for flexibility by firms. From this point of view, of interest are the results of a survey by Istat, the national statistical institute, published in January 1999 - I principali risultati della rilevazione sulla flessibilità nel mercato del lavoro, Istat, 13 January 1999 - examining labour flexibility (IT9710214F) and company-level bargaining during the two-year period 1995-6 in industrial and service businesses with at least 10 employees.
According to the Istat survey, in the period in question company-level bargaining involved 3.2 million workers or 38.8% of the total labour force. Almost three-quarters of the workers concerned (73.4%) were employed in industry, while the remaining 26.6% worked in services.
The most widespread form of bargained flexibility is wage flexibility, which involves 74.5% of the workers covered by company-level collective bargaining and 22.7% of the total labour force. Wage flexibility linked to company performance is achieved via the bargaining over performance pay introduced by the central tripartite agreement of 23 July 1993 (IT9803223F). Istat finds that performance-related pay is particularly widespread in the North-West (where 42.9% of the workers covered by this type of bargaining on pay are located), but very rare in the South (4.9% of the total). The most frequently used performance indicators are quantitative (22.1%), followed by qualitative ones (20.4%) and economic ones (19.8%).
Negotiation on aspects of organisational flexibility involves 34.3% of workers covered by company-level bargaining and 13.3% of the total labour force. In general, wage issues (44.4% of cases) come first among the topics covered by bargaining, followed by working hours and work organisation (18.6%).
As far as working hours are concerned: 47.8% of workers in firms with more than 10 employees regularly work in shifts, while a further 5.3% occasionally do so; 34.4% work on Saturdays; 32.5% do night work; 22.8% work overtime; and 21.9% work during weekends and holidays. Telework still seems to be rare, involving only 0.4% of the total labour force.
The distribution of the various types of employment relationship in firms still highlights the marked prevalence of indefinite duration contracts. In 1996, this type of arrangement covered 92.4% of employees, while fixed-term contracts concerned 3% of workers (to which a further 1.2% of seasonal contracts can be added), work/training contract s constituted 2.5% of the total, and apprenticeships 0.9%. A different picture emerges from the analysis of flows: only 45.3% of new workers are hired on open-ended contracts, while 26.3% have fixed-term contracts and a further 16.1% seasonal ones, 9.5% have training/work contracts, and 2.9% have been hired on apprenticeship contracts. In general, the Istat report states that the increase in employment in industrial firms and services in 1996 ( 145,000 units) was "entirely due to forms of atypical contract". This finding is confirmed by the trend in the years 1997-8, which is all the more significant because it follows the temporary work arrangements and reform of the apprenticeship system introduced by the 1997 "Treu package" of labour market measures (IT9707308F). In 1998, according to Istat's 1998 Annual Report published on 18 March 1999, 54.9% of newly-hired workers had atypical employment contracts, and more than 70% of the overall increase in dependent employment over 1997 derived from the growth in atypical jobs (123,000 out of a total of 173,000) - see table 3 below.
| Type of employment relationship | Recruitments | Stock | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| . | Number (000s) | % | Number (000s) | % |
| Full-time | 1,972 | 82.1 | 13,364 | 92.4 |
| Part-time | 435 | 18.1 | 1,094 | 7.6 |
| Permanent | 1,215 | 50.6 | 13,170 | 91.1 |
| Temporary | 1,199 | 49.9 | 1,288 | 8.9 |
| "Atypical" | 1,319 | 54.9 | 2,382 | 16.5 |
| Total | 2,404 | 100.0 | 14,458 | 100.0 |
Source: Istat Annual Report for 1998.
Commentary
The three studies discussed above offer interesting insights since, as mentioned, they serve to delineate various aspects of the "demand" for and the "supply" of work flexibility. A shortcoming may be that they solely emphasise aspects to do with flexibility in working hours, wages and contractual arrangements, while they do not deal with the qualitative features of functional flexibility connected with the evolution of vocational skills. However, changes in working hours, the wage structure and the distribution of types of employment relationship highlight key features of the ongoing transformation of work, and they have the advantage of lending themselves better and more directly to quantitative and in a sense "objective" analysis, which leaves less room for interpretations. Moreover, they may have major consequences of a qualitative nature, albeit ones not yet clearly identifiable, and they may be connected with important organisational and occupational changes.
A first feature highlighted by the results of the three studies is a certain convergence between the supply of and demand for flexibility. This is reflected by the larger number of people willing to accept part-time employment, by the readiness of young job-seekers to move away from home to find work and to accept lower wages in exchange for training, and by the large percentage of people willing to undertake telework. In some cases, this willingness can be linked with a desire to redraw the boundaries between free time and work. For example, more than 30% of the young people interviewed during the Cgil-commissioned survey declared that they preferred a job which gave them more free time, rather than a job which paid a better wage.
If further confirmation were required, the increased demand for flexibility is borne out by all the data. Wage flexibility based on performance-related pay appears to be a distinctive characteristic of firms covered by company-level bargaining, which confirms the validity of the bargaining structure defined by the tripartite agreement of July 1993. A weakness may reside in the fact that its effects have been manifest mainly in that part of the country traditionally characterised by large-scale industry (the North-West), while it has only marginally affected the South, where perhaps it is precisely the absence of performance-related pay that represents a further element of wage flexibility. As far as types of employment relationship are concerned, the by now predominant use of so-called "atypical" forms of employment for new recruitment seems to be a key factor in job creation in Italy in recent years.
Working hours display conflicting tendencies: the figures show: the increasing spread of part-time work, but also of working hours in excess of 46 hours per week; a significant use of overtime; and a large share of employees working "unsocial hours", both in industry (mainly shifts and night work) and in services (especially at weekends and on holidays). This contradiction reveals a possible conflict between a desire to reconcile personal life and work and demands for flexibility, which seem to be moving towards an increase in working hours and towards work at times traditionally set aside for free time.
This latter aspect highlights a second issue arising from the research studies: the role of the trade unions in the regulation and diffusion of labour flexibility. The Istat study confirms the importance of company-level bargaining and negotiation in regulating important aspects of flexibilisation (in particular as regards wages and work organisation). On the other hand, the research on young people and work commissioned by Cgil signals a certain crisis in union representativeness and perhaps a degree of "ritualism" in trade union membership (suggested by the almost 40% of young union members who do not believe that the unions serve any purpose).
From this point of view, the trade union organisations have shown themselves attentive to ongoing changes in work (for example, by creating organisations for atypical workers, IT9807327F), while the promotion of union representation is to some extent implicit in the spread of national and local-level concertation and dialogue. To conclude, it is clear that changes in work arrangements challenge the model of the industrial trade union: the ability to interpret the growing supply of flexibility and to take an active part in negotiations over demands for it, is an important part of the test now facing trade union organisations (Roberto Pedersini, Fondazione Regionale Pietro Seveso).
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (1999), Research examines attitudes and behaviour on labour flexibility, article.
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