Atypical working incorporate Greece
| Published date | 01 October 2003 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450310490174 |
| Pages | 472-491 |
| Date | 01 October 2003 |
| Author | Dimitrios M. Mihail |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Atypical working in
corporate Greece
Dimitrios M. Mihail
Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia,
Thessaloniki, Greece
Keywords Flexible labour, Employment, Human resource management, Greece,
Industrial relations
Abstract The issue of non-standard forms of employment has sparked controversy in Greece. At
the same time the expansion of atypical employment has been identified by policy makers as a
central component of economic policy in combating high unemployment. However, there is a
marked absence of empirical studies on this issue. This study sheds light on contractual flexibility
surveying thirty establishments. The survey used an employer questionnaire to assess the extent to
which Greek employers have engaged in various forms of atypical employment as well as the
driving forces and managerial perceptions of the pertinent institutional framework. Results reveal
that temporary work is the primary source of contractual flexibility, and that this is mainly used to
adjust corporate capacity to demand variations, not to cut labour costs. Managerial discontent
with governmental legislation on working time flexibility has led employers to embrace the EU’s
flexibility-security approach through collective bargaining.
Introduction
Over the past decade the expansion of various forms of non-standard
employment has become a central issue for labour market policy in the
European Union (EU). Improvements in flexibility of work have been
highlighted as essential elements of the European employment strategy to
combat high unemployment in Europe. Both the White Paper on Growth,
Competitiveness and Employment in 1993 and the European Council meeting in
Essen in 1994 stressed the need for structural adjustment towards more flexible
labour markets. Along the same lines the Green Paper on Partnership for a New
Organisation of Work focused on the consolidation of the “flexible firm” within
which social dialogue promotes corporate flexibility and at the same time
ensures employment security at the workplace.
During the 1990s, unemployment in the EU was persistently high but very
unequal across member states. In 1999 Greece had an unemployment rate of 12
per cent, the second highest in the EU. Only Spain had a higher rate of
unemployment (European Commission, 2000a, pp. 33-4). Despite the decline of
unemployment by two percentage points over the last two years, the fight
against the scourge of high unemployment has been of outmost importance for
Greek policy makers. According to them unemployment in Greece is primarily
an expression of the failure of one to gain entry to paid employment, and not a
symptom of disorder within the labour market. What is very interesting is that
they pinpoint the low level of part-time employment and other types of
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ER
25,5
470
Received August 2002
Revised January 2003
Accepted January 2003
Employee Relations
Vol. 25 No. 5, 2003
pp. 470-489
qMCB UP Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450310490174
non-standard employment as one of the primary sources of unemployment in
the country. It is an important obstacle to employment “the limited availability
of flexible forms of employment, which provide a ‘bridge’ to employment, offer
work experience and keep individuals in touch with developments in the labour
market” (Greek Ministry of Labour and Social Security, 2001, p. 14).
This article was prompted by this discussion, namely, the increasing
importance of non-standard forms of employment in Greece in terms of
corporate adjustment and policy making. Very few studies have provided
recently an analysis of atypical work in Greece from an organizational
perspective (Kufidu and Mihail, 1999; SBBE, 2000; Papalexandri, 2000). This
paper attempts to fill this gap by examining how management strategies have
influenced the use of “flexible” employment in corporate Greece. The key issues
under investigation are:
.the extent to which Greek firms use non-standard forms of employment
and the main factors that influence their choice to adopt them; and
.the corporate response to the new institutional framework in promoting
atypical work and work time flexibility.
This article is divided into four sections. The second provides some stylized
facts on the frequency of atypical employment in EU member states. The third
presents and discusses the main findings of the empirical research in
addressing the main issues mentioned above, while a final section concludes
the study.
Atypical employment in the EU
In the labour market literature flexible employment arrangements are often
labeled “atypical” or “non-standard” - defined as employment relations outside
regular, full-time, permanent, wage and salary employment. Hence,
non-standard work includes flexible working practices such as part-time
work, seasonal work, fixed term contracts, agency work, teleworking,
home-based work, shift work, night and weekend work. These atypical
forms of employment are expressions of modern companies’ quest for flexible
organization in the workplace and thus most of them have been included in the
EU ad hoc labour market survey (European Commission, 2000a).
Table I, presenting EU data available only for certain forms of work,
illustrates the incidence of atypical forms of employment in the EU. This data
shows that the Greek policy makers’ claim of “limited availability of flexible
work” holds true only in the case of part-time contracts, while Greek
corporations use the other forms of flexible work quite frequently, at least in
comparison to their counterparts in the EU.
Indeed, the lowest percentage of part-time workers as part of total
employment is recorded in Greece. It amounted to only 6.1 per cent in 1999,
almost three times lower than the average rate in the EU. In contrast, 12.8 per
cent of total employment is under fixed-term contract, approaching the EU
Atypical
working in
Greece
471
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