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DURING some courses on production and management problems at the T.U.C. Training College job evaluation and merit rating were discussed. The notes used for that purpose form the basis of a booklet which the Trades Union Congress has published at 1s. 6d. Its purpose is to equip trade union representatives with an outline of the systems most widely used.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

BECAUSE productivity means profitability it is the aim of any manufacturing organization. Too often productivity is thought to be the same thing as increased production. In reality it is very different. The way to increase production is fairly obvious. More machinery is obtained, larger quantities of raw materials are purchased and more workers are engaged. If, for example, these three essentials are doubled production should be twice as much. Production has increased, but if it has not succeeded in lowering the price of whatever is being manufactured what has been gained?

This chapter examines the effects of Oportunidades, a conditional cash transfer program, on the allocation of time of household members in rural Mexico. I exploit the random placement of benefits across communities in the evaluation sample and the program's eligibility criteria and scheme of incentives to identify effects. The majority of Oportunidades benefits are linked to children's school attendance, implying a reduction in the price of schooling. I argue that changes in relative prices lead to substitution effects, whereas the (almost) unconditional nutritional transfer translates into an income effect. Findings show increases in schooling and reductions in children's participation in market and non-market work. Although the program does not seem to substantially alter adults’ time allocation, evidence suggests that adult women substitute for children's time in non-remunerated activities.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

The 1980s and 1990s were periods of far‐reaching transformations in working hours and flexibility in Europe. Usually those initiatives came from the social partners. Yet France stood out during this period in that it maintained an interventionist state; the climax of public intervention came when the Aubry laws were passed introducing the 35‐hour working week. Paradoxically, the Aubry laws resulted not in a weakening of collective bargaining, but in an unprecedented series of negotiations in companies. This article sets out the process leading to the laws, and then analyses the results of the negotiations.

This article examines experiments with shorter working hours in Finnish municipalities between 1996 and 1998. The article focuses on the effects of different working time experiments on employees (work ability), on working units (quality of services) and substitutes recruited during the experiments. The results indicate that shorter working hours reduce job exhaustion, with respect to both 6‐hour shifts and other forms of reduced hours. The participants reported positive changes the quality and availability of services, especially in the case of 6‐hour shifts. In addition, during the experiment, new employees (substitutes) reported improved chances to obtain work in the future; after the experiment, however, only small a proportion of these employees were able to procure a new job. The analysis was based on three kinds of questionnaire data. First, in the three municipalities (Jyväskylä, Naantali and Espoo) — supported by the European Social Fund (ESF) — three‐phased panel data included 75 experimental and 42 control group participants. The second set of data was gathered in the other 14 municipalities implementing different working time experiments with a two‐phased questionnaire (panel data without control groups, n = 567). The third set of data included new employees (substitutes) recruited during the experiment in the three ESF municipalities and in Saarijärvi (n = 66).

In 1993, an innovative working time agreement was achieved at the Volkswagen (VW) Company. Its major aim was to save 30,000 jobs in VW's six German plants, which were endangered because of a severe crisis of the car manufacturer. The 2‐year agreement included as its major point a reduction of the weekly working hours by 20% to 28.8 hours/week without complete financial compensation for the employees. In the years following, the original agreement was renewed and amended several times whereby the amendments mainly included a considerable flexibility of the working time structures at Volkswagen. This paper discusses the different agreements and presents some findings of a representative empirical study among the VW employees about the effects of the 28.8‐hour per week agreement. Finally, the question will be answered whether the VW model could serve as a general model to redistribute an existing volume of work among more employees in order to reduce unemployment.

Several surveys show that since 1980 the Dutch economy has experienced its most severe postwar recession. Demand and output growth started to fall in 1980 and continued to do so till 1985 In 1984 unemployment reached a record level (about 17 per cent), and has fallen only very slowly since then. Another remarkable characteristic is the withdrawal from the labour force of women, young people and social security beneficiaries