WASHINGTON, D.C. – Georgetown University Law Center professor Chai Feldblum, one of the architects of the Americans with

Professor Chai Feldblum

Disabilities Act, will direct Workplace Flexibility 2010 , a project to identify viable flexibility options for employers and employees.

"Today's laws and policies do not meet the needs of today's workers,” Feldblum said. “We envision a flexible workplace that meets the needs of employers and employees given the reality of today's workforce: One in which mothers and fathers both work, while having care giving responsibilities for their children and often their aging parents. We also have older workers who wish to work -- at least part time -- after they reach conventional retirement age. And, some workers who simply wish to learn new skills or volunteer in the community.”

Workplace Flexibility 2010 is funded by a grant of more than three-quarters of a million dollars from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “This initiative will provide the critical legal analysis needed to understand how to ensure genuinely flexible workplaces,” said Sloan Foundation program director Kathleen Christensen. “We can now build on years of academic research documenting the needs of American workers and families for workplace flexibility that will make a difference in people's lives.”

Workplace Flexibility 2010 will provide objective and reasoned analyses of existing laws and practices—in areas such as labor, employment, anti-discrimination, tax, health and benefits—to explain how the existence or absence of laws and practices hinder or support workplace flexibility. It will also engage leaders from business, community groups, unions, family groups and other potential stakeholders to define the contours of a comprehensive national policy on workplace flexibility and to form new alliances.

Contributing to Workplace Flexibility 2010 will be six lawyers and twelve students at the Georgetown Federal Legislation Clinic; Robert Raben, Nancy Buermeyer and Julia Sessoms of The Raben Group, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm; Professor Jean McGuire, Lorraine Snell Visiting Professor, at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts; and Patricia Kempthorne of the Center for Emerging Futures, an innovative, community-based organization located in Boise, Idaho.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic nonprofit institution. Its program area on Workplace, Workforce and Working Families has spent a decade documenting the needs of American workers and families for workplace flexilibity as well as the social, economic, psychological, and health consequences on individuals and communities of inflexible workplace structures.

About Georgetown University Law Center

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It has the largest full-time faculty in the nation and is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means; justice is the end. With this principle in mind, the Law Center has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body.

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