A proposal for reducing unemployment in the tertiary sector through changing time usage. The Spanish case

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO
Author/s Cristina Pardo-García, Maja Barac
Publishing Year 2018 Issue 2018/149
Language English Pages 19 P. 156-174 File size 164 KB
DOI 10.3280/SL2018-149010
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Unemployment is markedly higher in Spain than in other EU countries, having negative economic and social effects for individuals and for the society as a whole. Additionally, Spain employees show low productivity rates. This is in part due to the economic dependency on the tertiary sector, but also to some social aspects, namely, a different organization of the working hours and the split shift (including a long break for lunch) which complicates the reconciliation of work and family lives. The authors focus on the service sector and propose concentrating the work day to finish work earlier and to add a new shift in the evening to allow shops, banks and the important hospitality sector, among others, to remain open all day. The generalisation of a double straight shift, instead of a single split shift, should generate expected social benefits like the enhancement of productivity and the creation of jobs, i.e. unemployment reduction.

Keywords: Unemployment, split shift, work schedule, reconciling work and family

  1. ABC (2017). El PP continúa su brega por la conciliación: propone acabar antes el «prime time» en 2017, ABC Newspaper, 14/04/2016 - updated on: 12/01/2017.
  2. Barr A., Miller L., Ubeda P. (2016). Moral consequences of becoming unemployed. PNAS: 1-6.
  3. Benito-Osorio D., Muñoz-Aguado L., Villar C. (2014). The Impact of Family and Work-Life Balance Policies on the Performance of Spanish Listed Companies. M@n@gement, 17: 214-236.
  4. Bourles R., Cette G. (2007). Trends in “structural” productivity levels in the major industrialized countries. Economic Letters, 95: 151-156.
  5. CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas) (2017). Barómetro, survey results consulted from January 2002 until January 2017.
  6. CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas) (2014). Prestigio ocupacional y estructura social, Estudio n. 3004.
  7. Colectivo Ioé (2011). Efectos sociales de la crisis. Una evaluación a partir del Barómetro social de España. Papeles de relaciones ecosociales y cambio global, 113: 177-188.
  8. Cuadrado J.R. (2004). Tres preguntas en torno a los servicios: crecimiento, empleo, productividad. Papeles de economía española, 100: 211-237.
  9. Cuadrado J.R., Maroto A. (2006). La productividad y los servicios. La necesaria revisión de la imagen tradicional. Productividad y Competitividad de La Economía Española-ICE, 829: 93-122.
  10. Eurostat (2017). Employment and Unemployment (Labour Force Survey), on-line database. <http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/lfs/data/main-tables> [Accessed on February 2017].
  11. González L., Hamermesh D.S. (2014). Los horarios españoles (otra vez), Nada es gratis (Blog on economy), 2014/03/06, http://nadaesgratis.es/libertad-gonzalez/los-horarios-espanoles-otra-vez[Accessed on February 2017].
  12. González-Chapela J. (2015). Split or straight? Evidence of the effects of work schedules on workers’ well-being, time use, and productivity. SERIEs, 6: 153-177.
  13. Gracia P., Kalmijn M. (2015). Parents’ Family Time and Work Schedules: The Split-Shift Schedule in Spain. Journal of Marriage and Family, 78: 401-415.
  14. Hamermesh D.S., Myers K.C., Pocock M.L. (2008). Cues for Timing and Coordination: Latitude, Letterman, and Longitude. Journal of Labour Economics, 26: 223-246. DOI: 10.1086/525027
  15. Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS), [Accessed on November 2017] www.h6.scb.se/tus/tus/AreaGraphCID.html.
  16. Iberdrola (2017). Comprometidos con la calidad de vida y la excelencia profesional www.iberdrola.com/personas-talento/por-que-iberdrola/conciliacion [Accessed on November 2017].
  17. IMF (International Monetary Fund) (2016). World Economic Outlook: Too Slow for Too Long. Washington, April 2016.
  18. IMF (International Monetary Fund) (2017). IMF Executive Board Concludes 2017 Article IV Consultation with Spain, Country Report 17/319.
  19. INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística) (2002). La encuesta del sector servicios, Boletín informativo del Instituto Nacional de Estadística [Accessed on December 2016].
  20. INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística) (2010). Encuesta de Empleo del Tiempo 2009-2010 (Time Use Survey) [Accessed on November 2017].
  21. INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística) (2016). Cuenta Satélite del Turismo de España. Base 2010. Serie 2010-2014, Nota de Prensa [Accessed on December 2016].
  22. Kumar, K. (1984). Unemployment as a problem in the development of industrial societies: the English experience. The Sociological Review, 32: 185-233.
  23. Laparra M., Pérez Eransus B., coord. (2012). Crisis y fractura social en Europa. Causas y efectos en España. Colección Estudios Sociales, Núm. 35. Barcelona: Obra Social “la Caixa”.
  24. León, P. (2014). La felicidad de trabajar de ocho a tres, newspaper article in El País, 26/12/2014.
  25. Lería A. (2016). ¿Qué propusieron los partidos sobre conciliación familiar en los programas electorales del 20-D?, 2016/01/13, El Periódico.
  26. Luxton, E. (2016). Is part-time working the key to happiness?, published in the World Economic Forum, 27/04/2016.
  27. Martin-Olalla J.M. (2014). Is Spanish time schedule really weird?/De verdad son tan anómalos los horarios españoles? Una comparación con Italia y Reino Unido. arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.4763.
  28. Martin-Olalla J.M. (2016a). +Una modesta propuesta conciliadora, Politikon (Blog on political economy), 2016/07/01, http://politikon.es/2016/07/01/unamodesta-propuesta-conciliadora/.
  29. Martin-Olalla J.M. (2016b). Historia del reloj adelantado en Europa occidental, Politikon (Blog on political economy), 2016/11/23, http://politikon.es/2016/11/23/historia-del-reloj-adelantado-en-europa-occidental/.
  30. McKee-Ryan F., Song Z., Wanberg C.R., Kinicki A.J. (2005). Psychological and physical well-being during unemployment: a meta-analytic study. Journal of applied psychology, 90(1), 53. DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.90.1.53
  31. Mengual E. (2016). ¿Qué pasaría si la jornada laboral en España acabara por ley a las seis?, newspaper article in El Mundo, 04/04/2016.
  32. Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigración (2010). Encuesta de calidad de vida en el trabajo. Subdirección General de Estadística, NIPO: 790-11-074-3.
  33. Munera I. (2016). Más de la mitad de las horas extraordinarias no se pagan. El Mundo, 22/08/2016.
  34. OECD (2011). Doing Better for Families. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264098732-en.
  35. Pérez J.M., coord. (2017). ¿Es nuestro huso horario un problema? Ed. Consello da Cultura Galega.
  36. Summers L.H. (2014). US economic prospects: Secular stagnation, hysteresis, and the zero lower bound. Business Economics, 49: 65-73. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-57251-6_38
  37. Turner J.B. (1995). Economic context and the health effects of unemployment. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 36: 213-229.
  38. Van Ark B., McGuckin R.H. (1999). International Comparisons of Labor Productivity and Per Capita Income. Monthly Labour Review, 122: 33-41.

Cristina Pardo-García, Maja Barac, A proposal for reducing unemployment in the tertiary sector through changing time usage. The Spanish case in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 149/2018, pp 156-174, DOI: 10.3280/SL2018-149010