The Differentiation of Households and Working Time Arrangements in West Germany

Abstract

The 1980s have seen a rapid increase in the differentiation of working time arrangements throughout the public and the private sectors across Europe. The ‘standard employment relationship’ (a forty-hour, five-day working week, normally from Monday to Friday, an eight-hour working day, and a fixed daily working schedule), as it emerged during the 1950s and 1960s, no longer prevails. It is neither the dominant pattern of employment or even a normative fiction that can appropriately guide working time and social policy-making (Muckenberger, 1985). It has come under pressure from both employers and a rising number of employees who — although for different reasons — are demanding more flexibility. Two seemingly unrelated trends of socioeconomic change have contributed to the questioning of the traditional working time structure.