August 14, 2009 .
The Workplace Flexibility 2010 News Roundup is a compilation of the latest news articles, reports and other materials related to workplace flexibility. The News Roundup appears twice-weekly. If you have questions about any of the items, please contact WF2010@law.georgetown.edu.
Articles
Mental Health Issues Affecting Large Number of Temporary Workers
“In this economy many HR executives have worried about the mental health of their full-time employees, but they should actually be more concerned about their temporary workers, according to research published by McGill University. Workers hired for temporary or contract work face a higher risk of developing mental health problems such as depression, according to the research authored by Amelie Quesnel-Vallee, a medical sociologist at Montreal-based McGill. [. . .] The study, based on records collected biennially between 1992 and 2002 from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, focuses on workers who don’t expect to be with their current jobs for more than one year.”
Presidential Vacations Carry Heavy Baggage
“President Obama will bring his notably calmer, cooler demeanor to the Vineyard when he arrives Aug. 23 for a family vacation. There are no public events scheduled during the week; Obama plans to spend most of the time in seclusion with his family and a few close friends, aides say. [. . .] ‘There's been a public significance to presidential vacations going back all the way to Lincoln, who went to the Soldier's Home in Washington during the Civil War,’ said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University history professor and the author of ‘The Age of Reagan.’ ‘You have to show the country that you are getting respite from the job, but also that you are still ever at the ready. It's a delicate balance.’”
Flu battle hits home
“On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised against the closings of schools that occurred in many areas last spring, but called for parents to keep sick children home until at least 24 hours after they no longer have signs of a fever. Boston health officials have been asking businesses to let employees take paid sick days so they can stay home with children. It is regrettable that Congress has yet to pass legislation requiring large employers to offer paid days off for workers who are sick or have to care for family members. Without such legislation, a sense of shared commitment will have to suffice.”
Quality vs. quantity in work, life
“As the summer wanes and Labor Day looms, we would do well to take stock of our working lives. After all, on average, the working American spends 93,000 hours at work over a lifetime. And with the national unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent, those who have work are wise not only to thank their lucky stars, but also to make the most of it. Those on the sidelines are smart to be proactive and creative in setting themselves up for gainful employment. What's mostly lost in the unemployment statistics is that many Americans are in the midst of a reframing process when it comes to their outlook on work. Americans take the least amount of vacation time in the industrialized world.”
Do four-day work weeks work? Governments report mixed results. but employees love it
Reports
2009 Guide to Bold New Ideas for Making Work Work
From Press Release: “In a time of high unemployment and widespread cost cutting, a surprising number of organizations around the country are raising the bar in developing effective and flexible workplace practices. Hundreds of these ideas are captured in the ‘2009 Guide to Bold New Ideas for Making Work Work,’ released today by the Families and Work Institute (FWI).”
Blogs
Work-Life in China
“The Center for Work & Family recently released a new issue of our Executive Briefing Series called Work-Life in China. With China a major focus of the global economy and with increasing numbers of companies doing significant business there, we wanted to provide an easily digestable look at the economic, social, and cultural contexts of China, and how they inform approaches to work-life for organizations operating there. We look at the radical change in employment in China in recent years, as state-owned enterprises have given way to the emergence of the private sector, and as work-life support has shifted from a government provision for all to a corporate asset in the recruitment of talent.”
Single Dad and CEO
“I just returned on Wednesday from a one week vacation with my children -- with my nine-year-old daughter and twin six-year-olds -- so the question of how leaders vacation is timely. As a single father and CEO, I believe strongly in life-work balance and over time have crafted three principles that guide me: First, there is never a good time to go on vacation so I just have to schedule it and do it. There are so many demands on my schedule that make it difficult to just take off. I say this to staff when they ask about their own vacation needs. If I wait for things to slow down so I can do it, it will not happen.”
'Precious' Advice
“Everyone understands leaders should make time to recharge, yet there are also expectations these days that they remain available, informed and plugged in while on vacation. How should they strike that balance? The word "vacation" comes from the Latin root vacare, which means, "to be unoccupied." When leaders go on vacation they should "vacate" their job and title. If properly undertaken, vacations are more than therapeutic - they are constructive. Leaders need to get away because it is easy for them to lose perspective on themselves and their work. This loss of perspective sometimes results in unethical and/or ineffective behavior. Vacations offer leaders a different place to stand - an observation point for looking at who they are and what they do.”
Telecommuting: A greater freedom, or a new kind of slavery?
“It wasn't that long ago that telecommuting was an idea rooted in science fiction, alongside robot maids and flying cars. Cheap consumer electronics and internet connectivity have transformed the concept into a common practice for workers, though; in fact, the biggest hurdle hasn't been the limits of technology but of employers who are reticent to let workers out of their sight. But the recession is changing that. As companies focus on the bottom line, the convenience and saved costs of telecommuting have become highly attractive, and as the home office increasingly becomes the only office, shifting product trends are making telecommuting increasingly convenient. At its consumer products show last month, big-box retailer Best Buy (BBY) highlighted numerous tools designed to expand worker mobility, increase home-office flexibility, and ease the interaction between personal entertainment tools and employment.”
The BlackBerry affliction
“Employment attorneys often bemoan that the FLSA—with its aversion to comp time and flexible scheduling, its unwieldy definitions of who is nonexempt—is simply ill-suited to today’s 24/7, BlackBerry-buzzing world of work. But the statute’s purpose, when enacted in 1938, was to ensure working conditions deemed necessary ‘for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers.’ Perhaps those legislators were onto something.”
The 51 Best Law Firm for Women? The Anonymous Lawyer Weighs In
“So we do — honestly — send out our hearty congratulations to all those deserving firms who were included on Working Mother’s list of the 50 Best Law Firms for Women. But here’s the issue: we got so flooded with press releases on Tuesday from law-firm PR folks looking for a little mention that, yes, they too were on the list, that our head started to spin. It wasn’t made any better by the fact that the releases were all so similar. A squib about the award, a quote from the managing partner, a quick reference to mentoring, maternity-care policies, day-care, and on and on and on. Zzzzzzzz. So, with that in mind, we called upon Jeremy Blachman, aka the Anonymous Lawyer, to go at the topic with a bit of his inimitable humor.”
Global News
I confess that I was working on my stag
“For those of us without the luxury of paid time off or a guaranteed income, a workaholic schedule becomes a way of life. You find yourself routinely putting in seven day weeks -- and even taking your work with you on holidays. Indeed, the very concept of a holiday becomes nebulous if you're a workaholic. You end up doing your usual grind ,but in more pleasant surroundings. Down the years, I've laboured over pieces at a greasy McDonalds in New York, on a bench in Spain (thank god for iPhones) and, on one occasion, struggling to stay awake from jet lag at a youth hostel in Japan, with a football team worth of unimpressed Australians queuing to use the establishment's only terminal.”
Some things must pass
“The challenge for conservatives is not to identify the changes they oppose but to formulate the changes they support. [. . .] Similarly, conservatives have had reservations about paid maternity leave schemes because, they think, mothers' primary responsibility is to their children. The further argument that paid maternity leave (but not sick leave, holiday pay or compulsory superannuation levies) would be an intolerable burden on small business has helped to cast, I suspect, a ‘blokey’ pall over conservatism. Perhaps more than anything else, this suggestion that mothers in the paid workforce might be shirking their real responsibilities explains why there are so few outspoken conservative women. Only a man could think that working might reduce a mother's responsibilities rather than add to them.”