In the 1980s, a rash of hell-in-a-handbasket headlines announced the new scourge of Europe: The Dutch Disease. The Dutch economy was stagnating with growing deficits and swelling numbers of unemployed workers.
With an unemployment rate hovering around 12 per cent and an estimated 10,000 people a month joining the unemployment rolls in 1984, the state of the Dutch economy was dire.
But by the early 1990s, things began to turn around. Through a set of policies including wage moderation coupled with reduced work hours, the ‘Dutch Disease’ became the ‘Dutch Miracle.’
Unemployment fell to just over six per cent in 1997. By 2001, roughly three quarters of the population between 15 and 64 years of age were employed, compared to 61 per cent in Canada. In 2003, the Dutch unemployment rate was 3.8 per cent.
In 2002, the most recent work-hours data available, the Netherlands had the shortest work hours of any OECD country – 438 fewer annual work hours than in Canada. It also had one of the highest rates of hourly labour productivity.
Workers now have the legislated right to reduce their hours. Dutch laws also guarantee against discrimination in terms of wages, benefits, and opportunities for career advancement. In other words, part-timers get pro-rated benefits according to hours worked, opportunities for promotion, and wages similar to their full-time counterparts. The result is that most people who work part-time want to do so.
A 1996 study showed than only six per cent of Dutch part-timers would rather have full-time work, compared with 26 per cent of Canada’s part-time workforce.
“The Dutch are not aiming to maximize gross national product per capita. Rather we are seeking to attain a high quality of life, a just, participatory and sustainable society that is cohesive,” former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers commented in 1999. “Thus, while the Dutch economy is very efficient per working hour, the number of working hours per citizen is rather limited…We like it that way.”
The Netherlands experience demonstrates that making part-time work ‘good’ work with equal hourly pay, pro-rated benefits, and equal opportunity for career advancement can increase the overall rate of part-time work while reducing the rate of involuntary part-time work. It can create jobs by redistributing work hours, and improve quality of life and work-life balance by expanding leisure time.
This article was originally published in Reality Check: The Canadian Review of Wellbeing, a joint project of The Atkinson Charitable Foundation and GPI Atlantic.
Posted by sandwichman at January 5, 2005 06:00 PM