According to data from the Ministry of Labour, compiled by the Czech Statistical Office, most of them are people between the ages of 30 and 44. Over 122,000 of them worked part-time last year, of which over 107,000 were women and about 15,000 were men. The age roughly corresponds to the time when parents raise their children, deal with their attendance at kindergarten and school.
383 thousand employees out of 5.2 million have short-time work. That’s 7.4 percent
Another 93,000 people work part-time between the ages of 45 and 59, which is often the time when they take care of disabled parents. Again, even at this age, women (73,000) cut their jobs more often than men (20,000).
About 108,000 people aged 60 and over work, of which 61,000 are women and 47,000 are men. Conversely, for the youngest employees between 15 and 29 years of age, the employment relationship with shorter working hours is only about 59,000. Of these, 36,000 are women and 23,000 are men.
A fifth of employees can’t make ends meet, which is why they are more often looking for a new job
State support
According to the government, shorter working hours are the way for society to cope with delayed retirements to 68 years and shorter receipt of parental allowance up to three years of age of the child.
To support them, the state started providing a discount on social contributions from February. By the end of June, according to Labor Minister Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL), about 24,000 employers should offer part-time positions.
“Targeting indirect support for part-time workers makes it more accessible especially for caregivers. According to available data, eight thousand new part-time jobs have been created since the introduction of the amendment. In our environment, these are mainly mothers of children under 10 or women of pre-retirement age who take care of their parents or their partner’s parents,” STEM analyst Kateřina Broža stated for Právo.
Law addressed the question of what options employees have with them, as well as some employers. Stores that are often looking for cashiers can adapt. For example, at Kaufland, according to spokeswoman Renata Maierl, 28 percent of employees signed a short-time contract, the majority of which are mothers of small children.
The situation is similar elsewhere. “Short-time working hours are most often used by mothers taking care of children, students and colleagues of pre-retirement or retirement age,” Teska Iva Pavlousková, spokeswoman for Pravá, told Pravá. “People from other age categories are increasingly using short-time work, as well as those for whom it is additional income to another job,” she added.
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Singing Rock, a climbing clothing company, offers reduced working hours to mothers and people with disabilities. “In the production plant, we have 11 of them out of 66, so the share is 17 percent of the total number of employees in the position of clothing operation worker,” the company’s personnel officer Jiří Čermák told Práv.
In the Agrofert concern, the possibilities differ from company to company. “Part-time restrictions represent operations and activities in which this is simply not possible. HR professionals try to find mutually beneficial solutions for those interested in part-time work in these positions. It can be just small things – moving the start of the shift, individual working hours schedule,” said spokesperson Pavel Heřmanský.
Staffing agency GIT claims that part-time positions account for about 10 percent of filled positions. “Most often, these are positions in the administration, such as assistants, receptionists, but also specialist positions, where flexible working hours are possible and are suitable, for example, for mothers on maternity leave,” said HR specialist Hana Vondrušková.
Impact on pension
Last year’s data from the Association of Social Responsibility state that the share of women with part-time work is 9.9 percent in the Czech Republic, while it is over 48 percent in Germany and Austria, and even 74 percent in the Netherlands. The average in the EU is over 29 percent.
Shorter working hours, and thus lower earnings than full-time, also have downsides that will affect the amount of the old-age pension. The percentage depends on the number of years worked and lifetime earnings.
“The amount withdrawn will actually be lower in the case of short-time work, and thus the annuity subsequently paid will also be proportionately lower. And that is one of the reasons, apart from the overall lower income, why short-time work is less common in the Czech Republic than in other member states,” says Broža.
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