MORE flexible approach to work sharing could create up to 0,000 jobs, according to the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald.
She was speaking at the launch of a report from the National Economic and Social Forum entitled "Jobs Potential of Work Sharing", published yesterday. She also said many of the vacancies could be filled by the long term unemployed.
The chairwoman of the forum, Ms Maureen Gaffney, welcomed the Minister's approach but she warned that the long term unemployed could only hope to get the jobs if adequate resources were given to the Local Employment Schemes currently being set up in disadvantaged areas.
The report shows a radically changing jobs market. While the number of people in full time employment has risen by 4.7 per cent between 1986 and 1994, the number of part time employees has risen by 108 per cent.
Of the 137,000 part time workers in the economy in 1994, 98,000, or 70 per cent, were women. Eighty per cent of part time workers were employed in the services sector.
Prof Donal Dineen, head of the economics department at the University of Limerick and chairman of the NESF sub committee which drew up the report, said that many employers preferred part time workers, who were often cheaper.
He said there were several ways of creating employment through cork sharing. The first was by reducing working hours. Experience suggested this might be more successful in reducing redundancies rather than generating job.
Reducing overtime, especially there it had become systematic was probably a better way of creating jobs, along with job sharing schemes, early retirement, phased retirement and career breaks.
The provision of adequate child care facilities and a properly resourced Local Employment Service were crucial to ensuring that work sharing created employment.
Ms Fitzgerald said the report could provide "a real opportunity to give people more family friendly conditions of employment and create additional vacancies, especially for the long term unemployed".
Two inter departmental committees are being set up to look at the report's proposals, said Ms Fitzgerald. One would concentrate on the private sector and one on the public sector.
There had already been a number of public sector initiatives, but there had been comparatively little done in the private sector.
"We have inherited 19th century notions of fixed hours and someone at home cooking the dinner or looking after the children and a great deal of rigidity had set in," she said.
Many people objected that the long term unemployed lacked the skills to take up many jobs but research by the ESRI and pilot work in disadvantaged areas suggested there was a large pool of untapped energy and ability.
Ms Fitzgerald said that the state already trained people through FAS and the VECs. There was no reason why such agencies could not provide training on the job, at least in the public sector.