From Oldenburg to Düsseldorf and on to Maastricht

Connections Rather Than Associations

Enquiries gradually arrived from Ireland, Italy and other countries. It soon became clear that founding an association did not make sense everywhere, whether legally or practically. Instead, the idea of national working groups emerged. Step by step, Jobsharing Working Groups took shape, cooperating closely with EURO-TZA e.V. and forming the foundation of our European collaboration. What sounds self-evident today was an enormous challenge at the time. Everyone involved – in Germany and in the partner countries – held a regular job and volunteered in their spare time. Unpaid, with no budget and no infrastructure. And without the internet.

A Joint Catalogue of Questions and Tasks

So that we could compare the situation in the individual countries at all, the board developed a standardised catalogue of questions and tasks. We wanted to know what legislation on part-time work existed, whether the term jobsharing was already familiar, or whether similar models were being practised under other names. We asked about companies that already used part-time work, about academic research, labour market statistics and press reports, about the attitudes of employers and trade unions – and whether there were people or institutions already engaged intensively with the subject. Much of this information had to be researched laboriously. We waited weeks for replies. Some letters contained extensive materials, others only a few pointers. In some countries it was extremely difficult to find out anything at all. And yet, letter by letter, a first European picture of part-time work took shape – fragmentary, but real.

The Regional Press Takes Notice

Our founding of the association did not go unnoticed in Oldenburg either. On 29 March 1988, the Nordwest-Zeitung reported under the headline: ‘Young Researchers Want to Promote Job Sharing’

The article captures our aims at the time particularly well:

„For their work, the researchers intend first to build up literature documentation in the various countries and to explore part-time work through theoretical analysis. The plan is later to introduce different forms of part-time work in companies willing to cooperate and to evaluate the experiences scientifically.."

Nordwest-Zeitung, 29 March 1988 (translated from the German)

Building scientific foundations, exchanging international experience, trialling new working models together with companies – this threefold approach describes exactly what we were about. When I look at this newspaper clipping today, I think: yes, that is exactly how it was. We were young, we had little money and no digital infrastructure. But we had a clear picture of what we wanted – and people in nine countries who were willing to write letters, send photographs and ask questions that I sometimes could not yet answer. That was the beginning.

From Oldenburg to Düsseldorf and Maastricht

During my time at the European Parliament in Luxembourg I had also met Dagmar. Like Theophile, she was there as a visiteur in the field of law. Dagmar and I lived together in the house of Mme Agresta, who let rooms to people working at the Parliament. Carol from Ireland lived there too.

My time in Luxembourg was over, but our shared idea of making jobsharing better known in Europe stayed with me. André from the Netherlands had meanwhile made contact with the University of Maastricht and arranged an appointment there for our jobsharing project. Our idea was taking on ever more concrete form. André suggested picking me up in Düsseldorf so that we could travel on to Maastricht together. He already knew Dagmar as well. So I first spent a few days with Dagmar in Düsseldorf. We reminisced about our time together in Luxembourg and, naturally, also talked about our European jobsharing project. It was lovely to see that the contacts we had made in Luxembourg were now continuing to have an effect across national borders. When André finally collected me from Dagmar’s, she captured the moment with photographs of us in front of André’s car. I am sharing one of the photos from that day with you here – a small reminder of the people and encounters from which our joint venture grew.

Maastricht: The First International Research Discussion

My Dutch friend André, who had also worked as a stagiaire at the European Parliament, had developed a great interest in my jobsharing project. He was enthusiastic about the idea and helped me to build contacts with academics in the Netherlands. Together we drove to Maastricht. There André had arranged a meeting with two academics: Prof. Dr J. A. M. Heijke, Director of the Research Department at the Institute of Economics, and Dr C. de Neubourg of the Limburg Institute for Business and Economic Research at Maastricht University.

For me, this meeting was something special. For the first time, I discussed my ideas on qualified part-time work and jobsharing with researchers outside Germany. We talked about labour markets, employment policy and the role that innovative working-time models might play in Europe in future. And I realised that the interest was genuine. The questions that preoccupied me preoccupied others too.

Today such a meeting seems a matter of course. At the time it was anything but. There was no internet, no video conferencing, no social networks. Anyone wanting to build international contacts had to travel, write letters, telephone and hold face-to-face conversations. That is precisely why these encounters were so valuable – and precisely why they stayed in the memory.