Ditching the Nine to Five: How Flexible Working Times Affect Job Quality and Create New Opportunities for Collective Bargaining

Flexible working time arrangements have become increasingly popular during the 21st century. Instead of working a fixed amount of hours during every week, employees with a flexible work arrangement work an average number of hours per week over a period of several months or more. If the work piles up, employees can make longer days, in exchange for more time off during the rest of the year. And instead of Dolly Parton’s classic nine to five, workers can make non-standard hours or fragmented work days: they can take a break at the end of the afternoon to spend time with their family, and then put in a few more hours from home once the kids are asleep.

In theory, this flexibility holds a great promise to both employees and employers. Employees could gain more autonomy and a better work-life balance: they can take on an extra shift for additional income or schedule work around their family or caregiving responsibilities. Employers could deal with peaks and lows in the workflow without having to hire extra staff, by asking their personnel to work more when their business requires it. What’s not to love?

Indeed, if flexible working hours are combined with strong employer agency, such as a right of an individual employee to consent to working flexible hours, they can improve upon job quality. In practice, employers can often unilaterally decide how flexible working time arrangements are scheduled. As a result, employees and other workers face fragmented, unpredictable or last-minute shifts, long working weeks and a blurring of work and private life. Especially in sectors where job security is lacking, workers can feel pressured to accept this so-called ‘temporal precarity’. This allows employers to shift the risks related to volatile workloads - typically an organizational risk - to the workforce.

Effects of unpredictable hours

It is important to realize that in most cases, employer-decided flexible hours have an important, negative impact upon both the physical and mental health of workers. European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) researcher Agnieszka Piasna shows there is a clearly established link between the way working time is arranged and the well-being of employees. Unpredictable and fragmented working time arrangements lead to an increase in work intensity. The long days that often come with employer-scheduled flexible working time are known to lead to a wide range of health issues, including circulatory and heart diseases, anxiety and unhealthier lifestyles in general. In short: under employer-central flexible working time arrangements, the price for fluctuating demand is paid for in employee health.

Are these effects known to employers and those who govern the labour market and how is working time governed in practice? Recent research by WageIndicator, CELSI, Utrecht University and University of Girona, shows that flexible working time arrangements have become increasingly common in collective bargaining agreements (CBAs). Around a quarter of the CBAs included in WageIndicator’s BARTIME project did not include a definition of standard working hours, which allows working time to be arranged at workplace level. Another 18% of CBA’s included ‘annualised hours’, ‘worktime accounts’ or similar measures, which explicitly allow the working hours to be scheduled flexibly as long as the average hours during a certain reference period is not exceeded.

Flexibility in the hospitality industry

One of the industries where flexible working time arrangements are widespread is the hospitality sector, which includes hotels, restaurants and tourist services. Traditionally, hospitality serves as a ‘stress-test’ for the labour market due to its 24/7 schedule and very volatile client demand that can change per month, day and even per hour. The BARTIME project illustrated how flexible working time arrangements are shaped in the hospitality sector across three different European countries: Estonia, Spain and Greece.

Estonia: avoiding overtime pay by long reference periods and retroactively changing the contract

In Estonia, employers in the hospitality sector rely heavily upon the statutory four-month reference period during which overtime can be balanced out with undertime (which, incidentally, is explicitly allowed under the European Working Time Directive). When interviewed, employers indicated that they distributed working time unevenly over the weeks to meet the often-changing demands of their company and its clients, as well as to avoid paying overtime.

Additionally, if employees still exceeded the agreed number of hours after they were balanced out, employers sometimes resorted to the “grey-labour practice” of retroactively changing the agreed number of hours, so that on paper the employees did not work overtime. Again, this way they could avoid paying extra. While formally this change requires employee consent, employees may feel pressured to agree, due to lack of job security.

Spain: company level CBAs allow intense and long working days

Following a financial crisis and subsequent labour law reform in 2010 - 2012, Spain saw a rise in company-level CBAs that eroded employee protection on topics as working time, overtime pay and shift scheduling. In CBAs in the hospitality sector, this was often done through the inclusion of annual working time accounts. The result was an increase in work intensity, longer days and more responsibilities for hospitality employees.

Eventually, the labour law reform led to resistance by movements such as LasKellys, a grassroots organization of women hotel cleaners. The labour law reforms were partially reversed in 2022, but CBAs in the hospitality sector still contain vague norms that leave a lot of room for employers to decide upon employee schedules. Further powered by a highly-fragmented landscape of CBAs (the BARTIME project counted over 50 provincial CBAs), Spain's hospitality industry remains a welcoming habitat for flexible, employee-led working time arrangements.

Greece

In Greece, flexibility is regulated less through a pattern of annualized working time accounts. Instead, collective agreements often allow employers to make exceptions to working time legislation due to operational demands or seasonal peaks. These exceptions include scheduling employees on their day off or during the weekend during the tourist season (albeit this sometimes requires employee consent). The exceptions are often either presented as protective for the worker or legitimized by offering additional compensation. Shift splits (working half of a shift, twice a day) are also prevalent. In practice, the exceptions give employers a lot of control over employee working hours. The theoretical 11-hour rest per day is often not observed.

New collective bargaining could improve employee agency

While unpredictable work schedules and long hours are increasingly linked to adverse health effects for employees, research still shows a clear trend in labour legislation and collective agreements allowing for employer-led flexibility.

At the same time, CBAs can play an important role in managing flexible working time arrangements and ensuring workers can join the conversation on how working time is governed. Social partners wishing to improve upon employee well-being, could do so by focusing upon mechanisms that strengthen employee autonomy, such as consent for working unsocial hours or split shifts.

Flexible working time arrangements also come with a risk of underdeclared work, such as some Estonian employers avoiding overtime pay by retroactively changing the agreed hours. Under the newly funded EU-HORIZON WUNDERWORK project, WageIndicator, Universiteit Utrecht and other partners are currently researching and testing the best practical solutions to dealing with underdeclared work. This can benefit states through higher tax incomes, employers through a stable workforce and employees through better structural pay and a say in working time.