To supervise the use of part -time and protect employees whose working time occupies a place that is both very wide and not very remunerative, it would be necessary to set a minimum duration for any work range and add remunerated time to any job taking.
The problem
Today more than one employee (between 25 and 65 years old) wins less than the minimum wage each month. If part of them may have partially chosen to exercise a reduced activity, the majority are unable to live decently from their work. This situation results from a low hourly wage, but above all from a reduced working time. However, part -time in many professions (cleaning, personal services, trade, catering, logistics, etc.) is paradoxically accompanied by a significant grip on daily life: flexible and offbeat times, fragmented days, long amplitudes, unpredictability of time jobs, etc. (Devetter and Valentin, 2024). In 2014, the government sought to supervise the part -time time by fixing a minimum of 24 hours per week, but the numerous possible derogations made this measure largely inoperative (Silvera 2020): almost half of the part -time jobs displayed durations lower than this threshold (Mourlot and Yildiz, 2020). In addition, the problem is not only in the weekly duration, but is rooted in the organization of the working day. How to better protect employees whose working time occupies a very wide place in the day while being very remunerative ?
The proposal:
Set a minimum duration for any work range (for example 3 hours) and add paid time (for example half an hour) to any job.
How does it work ?
Starting a workstation involves fixed costs (travel and cloakroom time for example) which make very short durations painful for employees who must repeat these operations several times during the day. The multiplication of these peripheral times to activity, not remunerated, can result in a grip of half-day work for a single hour of remunerated work.
Two types of measures would discourage the offer of highly fragmented work schedules. The first is to set a minimum duration of any work range as is already observed in certain branches (such as safety or audiovisual). The second could be added paid time linked to any “ postponement (For example 30 minutes). Thus a one -hour work period would be remunerated for an hour and a half hours of three hours would be paid for three and a half hours. This cost fixed by work period would encourage employers to avoid multiplying short sequences during the same day by transferring the risk of activity fluctuations to employees.
On what research work is the proposal founded ?
The importance of further regulating the use of part -time time is underlined by numerous research on the growth of atypical schedules, in particular due to the development of service activities (Devetter and Valentin, 2024). In recent years, various experiments have been carried out in particular in states or municipalities in the United States (Alexander and Haley-Lock, 2015 ; Lambert and Halley, 2021). In Europe, some countries are experiencing regulations of this type at the sectoral level: in Iceland for example, the branch of cleanliness requires a minimum working time of 3 hours against an hour in France.
How to implement ?
Adaptation of this type of measures requires negotiations in terms of collective agreements. However, the inequalities between social partners in many branches of services make a requiring legal public base (for example minimum remuneration periods of 3 hours). The risks of bypass are also important and can require employers’ support and strengthening controls, as analyzed by experiments on devices close to the United States (Petrucci et al, 2021) have shown.