PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT AND HUMUNGUS RETAILING CO

Part-Time Employment and Humungus Retailing Co



Part-Time Employment and Humungus Retailing Co

Introduction

The management of Humungus Retailing Co should stop exploitation of part-time workers. Such exploitations come under direct violation of labor laws and the company becomes liable to face the court.

We see that part-time employment is a formalized work arrangement where an employee works fewer hours than what an employer judges to be customary for a full-time employee. For legal and comparative purposes, it is defined as part-time employees as those working 1-34 hours during a typical work week and full-time employees as those working 35 or more hours during a typical work week (Kalleberg, 2000). These should not be mistreatment by the employers as it is the violation of labor rules. The requirement for, and the need to facilitate, part-time work in Ireland's modern economy is a business reality. This article considers the legislative framework which underpins that reality.

Discussion

The Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001 (the Act) attempts to protect part-time workers from less favourable treatment. It owes its origins to European Union social policy, in particular Council Directive 97/81/EC which concerned the Framework Agreement on part-time work.

The Indirect Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SDA) applies to all discrimination in the workplace, such as, selection for a job, training, promotion, work practices, dismissal or any other disadvantage such as sexual harassment. If a worker is discriminated against in their contractual terms of employment, then the Equal Pay Act applies.

Neither its introduction nor its implementation was accompanied by fanfare. No appaling vistas and no floodgates opened. Instead, it might be best categorised as a logical and incremental step necessary to consolidate changes already made in employment law, in order to facilitate an ongoing process to achieve a truly flexible labour market.

UK was to have enacted Council Directive 97/81/EC by the 20th of January 2000. It did not do so until the 20th December 2001 when the Act came into force.

The purpose of the Act is to protect part-time workers from less favourable treatment in terms of their employment benefits, when compared to their full-time colleagues. The Act does not seek to achieve for part-time workers statutory rights enjoyed by their fulltime colleagues. That had already been done. The Act states that "a part time employee shall not, in respect of his or her conditions of employment, be treated in a less favourable manner than a comparable full-time employee" (MacDermid, 2001).

Certain sanctions are laid out which might be visited upon the employer with a view to addressing the less favourable treatment.

A "part-time employee" is defined as "an employee whose normal hours of work are less than the normal hours of work of an employee who is a comparable employee in relation to him or her" (MacDermid, 2001). A permanent "full-time employee" is defined as "an employee who is not a part-time employee". Specific definitions are set out as to the meaning of "comparable employee" (Morrow, McElroy and Elliot, ...