Plight of Part-Timers Grows to Full-Time Myth
by


This first appeared in the
North Hills News Record

After listening to the sound bites, the media played this strike out to be some monumental moment in time for the blue-collar worker.

The litany usually went something like this. Overcompensated corporate fat-cats, Wall Street money mongers and cheap foreign labor have forced U.S. companies to hire more part-time employees because they'll work for less, they're easy to fire and they don't require benefits. With a tear in our eye, we saluted the men and women in those drab brown uniforms because they had the guts to stand against everything that's wrong in America.

Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but none of it is true.

The pessimists point to the statistics that say between 1968 and 1993, part-timers jumped from 14 percent to 17.6 percent of the overall workforce. True enough. But most of that increase came before 1975--back when powerful labor unions were supposed to be keeping an eye on things like that.

"Despite the fact that everybody thinks part-time work has become more common, it's not that different than it was 25 years ago," says Harvard Professor Lawrence. F. Katz, the former chief economist at the Department of Labor.

The number-crunching prophets of doom say they've spotted another surge in part-time employment in the past three years. But three years ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics slightly modified its labor survey. The old survey recorded 40 hours of work as a full-time job. No one bothered to distinguish whether those 40 hours came from one job or several jobs. The revised survey did. It's no surprise then that a few more part-time jobs suddenly showed up in the so-called official numbers. But nothing has changed in the real world.

The question no one is asking is: "What's wrong with part-time work?"

Most part-timers, over three-quarters of them, work part-time voluntarily. They come from every socio-demographic background imaginable. Some are students wanting extra cash. Some are older workers who aren't ready for full retirement. And many are women with children who want to keep a hand in the working world without placing undo stress on their families. These people don't want to be locked-in to a rigid and demanding full-time job, and they don't see themselves as a by-product of a morally bankrupt capitalistic system. They choose to work part-time.

So what about the so-called involuntary part-timers? Their status has far more to do with economic cycles than with overall business strategies. When business is good, companies usually add more jobs, both full and part-time. Even UPS, portrayed in the media as the evil empire of greed, added more than 10,000 full-time jobs over the past three years.

With enough effort and patience, most part-timers who want full-time employment can find it. Nobody forces anyone to settle for less. As far as job opportunities in the 90s, the whole issue of part-time employment is extremely overworked.

© Copyright Deborah A. Ayers 1997. All rights reserved.