CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Burger, Anna Sára |
|---|---|
| Title | The Political Economy of Extreme Work Hours in Western democracies |
| Summary | Work time is an important element of how political economies are organised. The number of hours on the job is not only related to the effort people exert at work, but also determines the time that she or he has left to pursue other activities in life. Therefore, work time is an important measure of well-being and quality of life. Contrary to John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 prediction, economic prosperity has not brought about a dramatic shortening of the work week in the developed world. Today, with an increasing number of full-time workers working more than 50 hours per week and an increasing number of involuntary part-timers, the reconciliation of work and life is far from being achievable for many people in the advanced West. This dissertation examines different aspects of the prevalence of very long, or extreme, weekly work hours in Western European and North American societies. Empirically, it documents diverging patterns of extreme work hours across Europe since the 1970s, using a novel meta-database of extreme work hours. Whereas in France and Scandinavia, the proportion of extreme work hours remained relatively low, in most other European countries it has radically increased. Theoretically, the dissertation proposes three major contributions to existing political economy literature. First, in Chapter II, it provides a macro-institutionalist argument against the neoclassical, or supply-side, point of view on the drivers of long work hours in post-industrial labour markets. It demonstrates that the choice whether to work long hours is not entirely, or even mainly, left to the preference of the individual. Instead, individual choices are constrained by labour market policies, collective bargaining institutions, and new labour market structures, the pattern and trends of which do not necessarily follow the contours of the welfare regime typology. Second, in Chapter IV, through a micro level analysis, the dissertation argues that extreme work is an important obstacle in the maturing of the female revolution. The high prevalence of very long work hours among the full-time employed makes it difficult for women to pursue the dual ambition of career and motherhood for two main reasons. First, as it is hard to reconcile the needs of children with an extreme job, many women self-select themselves into occupations below their skills in exchange for a better work-life balance. Second, women with an extreme worker partner face an elevated risk of falling in the long-term trap of part-time employment or inactivity. This translates into major losses of productive forces at the macro level. Third, in Chapter V, using extreme work as an instrument to measure changes in labour market structures, the dissertation argues that the rise in top income concentration is deeply rooted in structural changes in the labour market. Post-industrialism has restructured labour markets in a profound way, giving rise to a qualitatively different high-skilled labour market segment, a ‘winner-take-all’ segment, in which the constellation of weak labour representation and fierce competitive pressures has given rise to new type of vulnerabilities and unprecedented income inequalities among workers. |
| Supervisor | Kemmerling, Achim |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/burger_anna.pdf |
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