Consequences of an Increased Share of Part-Time Employment in the Bus Industry

The project investigates consequences of increased part time employment in the bus industry of rural Norway. It examines how the availability of part-time positions affect the employees job satisfaction and motivation; how it creates special challenges for leaders and union officials, when it comes to recruitment of drivers, sick leave and the planning of bus routes and working hours; how the procurement of bus services from public authorities puts pressure on bidders; as well as who works in the bus industry, how large the scale of part time employment is among drivers in the district, and how it has developed over time.

The project combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative methods consist of interviews and, text analysis of central documents related to public procurement in the industry. The quantitative methods consist of analysis of register data from Statistics Norway, and a short survey of bus drivers in one of the larges bus companies in Norway. This dataset contains data from the survey, which is the only data suitable to share publicly. The register data is freely available for all research institutions through microdata.no