January 6, 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
Telecommuting and the Spying Game
“Fuel prices are unpredictable, and companies need to cut overhead. So there's no better time to encourage telecommuting. But there's a downside: When people work from home, managers get suspicious. What if the telecommuter is goofing off? The suspicious employer could turn to remote monitoring technology, but that solution is both boon and bane. Sure, businesses can watch workers down to actual keystrokes and even literally keep eyes on them via webcams. But by doing so, the corporation can overstep bounds, open itself to lawsuits, antagonize workers, and turn contractors into full-time employees, whether they want to or not.”
An Economic Crash Women Might Have Helped Avert
“Whatever the reason, the experience of the past year suggests that we desperately need to bring more women into leadership positions on Wall Street, in politics, in regulatory bodies and in American life generally. For decades, corporations and financial firms have sponsored expensive training programs to promote more women into their ranks. They have launched much-needed maternity policies and flexible work arrangements. Most of these initiatives, however, have been pursued to make life easier for the women involved -- or, more cynically, to remove the threat of lawsuit or adverse publicity for the firms.”
The Senator Track
“The rhythm of office work — its hours, its demands, its life cycle — is designed for a man, ideally a man with a wife back home with the kids. Ever since the industrial age, career tracks have been built on the assumption that you can work around the clock in your 20s, shoulder increasing responsibility in your 30s and 40s and begin to ratchet down and move over for the next generation in your 50s and 60s. That doesn’t work for many women, who are apt to want to pause, physically and emotionally, for children, maybe slow down in their 30s, when men are charging ahead, and come back with a new energy in their 50s, when men are slowing down.”
Maternity-Leave Alternative - Bring the Baby to Work
“More companies are allowing women — and some men, too — to bring their babies to work. The advantages are clear: The women don’t lose money by taking maternity leave. They can breastfeed conveniently. And they can bond with the baby rather than worry that he or she will develop a closer connection with a nanny or a day-care provider. Of course, disadvantages are clear, too. The needs and noises of babies have the potential to be highly disruptive and to stir resentment among co-workers. [. . .] Critics also say that both child and job could lose out because the parent can’t be 100 percent devoted to either one.”
Good luck getting around D.C. on Inauguration Day
“On a typical weekday, hundreds of thousands of people commute to the nation's capital, snarling roads and packing subway trains and buses during peak hours. Imagine multiplying that several times for Barack Obama's inauguration Jan. 20. [. . .] While government workers are off that day, some sectors are requiring employees to show up. Nicholas Ramfos, who heads Commuter Connections, a nonprofit group that coordinates commuter programs in Washington, is recommending that employers allow workers to telecommute or shift their hours outside of peak inaugural travel time.”
Squeezing the American Worker
“‘The Big Squeeze’ author Steven Greenhouse tells Maria about the tough times faced by American workers.”
Bosses responding to special needs
“In the past, some of Kajuana Ezell's bosses and colleagues hadn't understood when she had to drop everything and leave work to care for her 17-year-old autistic son, who was mute until he was age 5. "Everywhere I went, I felt like I was educating everyone around me," says Ezell, a Hartford-based senior administrative assistant. "That's my most vivid memory: I can't go to my child" when he needs me. Now, working at Prudential Financial Inc., she's found not only flexibility and work-life resources, but an awareness of the extreme balancing act she faces as the parent of a special needs child.”
She's a Kennedy, But She's a Lot Like Us
“When we talk about women going back into the workforce, it's illuminating to consider the circumstances under which they left it in the first place. For many women, it was never truly a choice, never truly voluntary. As Pamela Stone, author of "Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home," points out, many are pushed out by jobs with long hours, rigid workweeks and inflexible demands. "These women haven't opted out," says Stone. "They've been shut out, by workplaces that don't pair well with family life." That's how I came to understand my own "choice" as well. And several years ago, when I moved to France -- which offers longer parental leave and better-quality child care than is the norm in the United States and which welcomes women back into the workplace after the birth of a child on a much more flexible basis -- I had a chance to see another way of doing things. This only underlined my belief that rather than freely "opting" to leave full-time work, I had simply been "stopping," faced with workplace demands that seemed incompatible with parenthood.”
Blogs
Caroline Kennedy, mommy wars, New York Times
“Belkin's misstep is to claim that by urging Gov. Paterson to name her senator without ever running for office, Kennedy "is opting in" in a manner that remotely resembles the choices of her former stay-at-home peers, and that the resistance she is facing is merely "a magnified version of the eyebrows raised whenever women try to return (or, in her far more unusual case, to first enter) the paid workforce full-time." This is a distortion that does a disservice to Kennedy's truly extraordinary pedigree and circumstances, but a far worse one to the women with whom Belkin is comparing her.”
The Obamas and Work-Life Balance
“Could incoming "Mom-in-Chief" first lady Michelle Obama change the way we think of stay-at-home moms and working moms? That's one idea floated by Ellicott City mom LaShanda Chirunga. Chirunga is a Harvard-educated lawyer turned stay-at-home mom of 1-year-old twins. She and her husband always planned on her staying home with the kids. "The oppportunity to spend time with children in formative years is exciting for me," she says. As a 37-year-old African-American woman, Chirunga didn't think she'd ever see a black man ascend to the presidency, as we are now. And to see the Obama family represent this country "as the best we have to offer" and to have them live in the White House is extraordinary, she says.”
Steve Jobs' Hormone Imbalance: Coping With Illness at Work
“Mr. Jobs’ announcement hit close to home, as I have faced debilitating and mysterious health problems this year, including severe insomnia. I feel fortunate that my schedule is relatively flexible, I have very understanding colleagues and that I work from home, so I can squeeze in doctors’ appointments and the occasional nap when necessary. But most workers in structured 8 to 5 corporate jobs aren’t so lucky. We’ve discussed in the past how tough it is to cope with chronic illness on the job. Have you or a co-worker faced a debilitating condition at work and how has that changed the workplace dynamic? Are colleagues and managers sympathetic or suspicious? Given Mr. Jobs’ announcement, do you support his decision to stay at the helm, or is it unfair to coworkers?”
Prediction: The 7 biggest work/life balance stories for 2009
“Happy 2009, folks. Hope your New Year's Eve was a joyous one. To wind down the year, my last post gave my picks for the top work/life balance stories of 2008. Today, I'm giving my predictions for the biggest work/life balance stories we'll see in the year ahead: 1. The continued rise of flex work. Realizing that you can't do the same amount of work with less people power, companies with common sense will choose flexible work arrangements over layoffs. Instituting telecommuting, shorter workweeks, and job sharing as cost-cutting measures not only keeps your people employed, it keeps their morale up during difficult financial times. Layoffs, of course, have the opposite effect.”
Obama Forms Task Force For Working Families
“One of the five major goals of the Task Force is to improve work and family balance. To measure the success of the task force, the members will assess whether or not the middle class is ‘growing’ and ‘prospering.’ News of steps that our new administration is taking to remedy the current economic crisis has been popping up over the past couple weeks – in particular, in regard to working families. Along these lines, Biden recently announced that Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute would be his chief economic policy advisor. So, while the success of this Task Force has yet to be determined, we can remain hopeful that the creation of this group is evidence of forward thinking for working families.”
Global News
Working the people
“So, blearily, government offices re-open, factories closed for an artificially long break think about turning on the lights again, and the fortnight of footling around we don't somehow count as a public holiday is over. The hardworking families so relentlessly invoked by politicians are going back to do business - if they can. But what, pray, about hardworking politicians? The question is asked in best Whitehall mode, as spur to one time and motion study that doesn't exist. We know how civil servants and quango operators can do better. The management consultants crawl over them endlessly. What we don't know is how major ministers - leaders of men - organise themselves to organise us. The familiar story tells of constant toil, stress, exhaustion. But the reality seems somehow oddly various.”
Recession Puts More Pressure on Japan's Workers
“In the last year or so, life appeared to be getting better for Japan's long-suffering workers. Sure, salarymen still toil long into the evening and are expected to guzzle with their bosses after hours. But employers, at the behest of government, have been taking steps to ease workloads, and recent cases suggest Japan's judiciary is more willing to side with employees who sue companies—a trend that could lead to a better balance between job demands and a worker's private life. [. . .] The economic downturn is weakening demand for Japanese exports, but it's unlikely to slacken many workloads. Thousands of temporary workers are being laid off and job insecurity is rising, which means few workers will want to appear as though they are not busy. In any case, after years of downsizing, there aren't as many people on the job, so a worker who declines to put in overtime knows his colleagues will have to pick up the slack.”