Part-Time Work A National Trend Corporations Benefiting From Cutting Benefits

For five years, Delroy Lewin has worked part time for United Parcel Service in Lauderhill, Fla., and every year he asks for a full-time job.

Lewin, 33, is paid less than full-timers and doesn’t get the same benefits, even though he sometimes works 40 hours a week. A vacation is virtually out of the question, he says, and his health insurance and pension plan cannot support a growing family. His wife, Mauvlyn, is four months pregnant with their first child.

At issue in the labor dispute between the Teamsters union and UPS is the status of part-timers like Lewin. It’s a labor problem that goes beyond this strike. Nationwide, the ranks of part-time workers have expanded over the last decade, initially driven by worker demand for flexible hours, and more recently propelled by corporate cost-cutting and downsizing.

“It’s good that this issue is getting some attention,” said Chris Tilly, a labor economist at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “Companies should be thinking about the size of their part-time work force and the second-class status of part-time workers.”

Tilly, the author of “Half a Job,” a 1996 book on part-time work, said the UPS dispute is “really the tip of the iceberg.” He and other labor economists warn of a growing trend in corporate America toward “lousy jobs,” including part-time and temporary positions.

“The level of job security has gone down, and certainly real wages have gone down,” Tilly said. “On average, jobs are getting worse.”

Part-time employment in America became widespread in the 1950s and ‘60s, when young mothers and teens wanted to work, but not full time. By the mid-1970s, the increase in part-time work had less to do with demographics and more to do with corporate cost-cutting.

“We’re seeing a national trend toward taking good jobs with good benefits and making them insecure, whether it’s by downsizing, or out-sourcing, or hiring more part-time workers,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University.

Only 19 percent of American part-time workers at medium and large companies receive medical insurance, compared with 77 percent of full-time employees, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute in Washington. Only half of part-timers get paid vacations, compared with 96 percent of full-timers.

Yet the majority of part-time workers in America, primarily mothers, students and the elderly, are happy with their part-time status. Only 3.5 percent of the labor force is involuntarily part-time, down from 6.5 percent in 1991, when there was an economic recession.

“In hard times, people take what they can get,” said Ken McDonnell, a research analyst with the Employee Benefits Research Institute. “As the economy goes into a recession, the percentage of part-time workers increases.”

At UPS, many employees are frustrated with the lack of full-time opportunities. In 1996, the company hired 180,000 part-timers, and only 40,000 remain with the company today - a turnover rate of 150 percent.

“A lot of workers are leaving because they want full-time jobs and aren’t getting them,” said Bronfenbrenner, who recently conducted a Teamsters-funded survey of 134 former part-time employees.

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