June 9, 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
Outside the 9-to-5
“One in five employees in the United States works mostly at nonstandard times--during the evening, at night, or on rotating shifts--and one in three works on the weekend. Despite their prevalence, nonstandard-hour workers are remarkably invisible, remaining largely off the radar screen of policy-makers, unions, and other groups concerned with jobs, workers, and working conditions. Of course, the times are changing. The Obama administration has pledged its support for several pro-worker policy reforms--including increasing and indexing the minimum wage, extending the Earned Income Tax Credit and strengthening workers' rights to unionize. The appointment of a progressive labor secretary further signals that working conditions are returning to the public agenda.”
A Progressive Program for Family Leave Insurance
“Americans experienced a seismic shift in how we work and how we provide care for our families over the past half century. Not that long ago, most families had a stay-at-home parent—usually a mother—but today, that is rarely the case. The vast majority of children grow up in a home where there are either two working parents or a single, working parent. Yet our nation’s workplaces and our labor policies simply haven’t kept pace. Unlike every other developed nation, the U.S. government does not require that workers have access to paid leave for the birth of a child or to care for a seriously ill family member. The federal government requires workers to buy (pay taxes) into a variety of social insurance systems to provide income—maybe not enough income, but some income—during times when they are unable to work or can’t find work, when they retire, or during a long-term disability. Yet our social insurance systems do not provide for any cash income when workers need time off to care for their family members or recover from a serious illness.”
When Opting Out Isn't an Option
“To hear the media tell the tale, the central problem facing working women today is the question of whether they should leave their professional careers to raise children. For much of the past decade, the "opt out" debate has been a staple of style sections and op-ed pages. It's easy to see why. The story of how highly educated, professional-track women choose to construct their personal lives lies at the nexus of personal, political, and economic issues. It is a good fit for business columns, for parenting magazines, for feminist blogs. From Lisa Belkin's coinage of the term ‘opt-out revolution’ in The New York Times Magazine in 2003, to Caitlin Flanagan's excoriation of feminists with nannies in The Atlantic in 2004, to Linda Hirshman's 2005 admonition that educated women Get to Work, upper-class women have never tired of discussing--and dissing--each other's choices. Even though professional, highly educated women who can afford to "opt out" account for only about 10 percent of working women aged 25 to 44, this debate has dominated the conversation about women and work.”
Downturn Puts a Chokehold on Those Caring For Family Members
“The economic crisis has spread its pain widely, but it has placed special stresses on the estimated 44 million Americans who provide care for an elderly or disabled relative or spouse, many of whom have already made themselves financially vulnerable trying to balance work and family. Many like Ms. Denk, who stepped away from the work force, are now facing ever-bleaker prospects. In a recent survey of 1,005 caregivers, one in six said they had lost a job during the downturn, and 21 percent said they had to share housing with family members to save money. The survey was conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving and Evercare, a division of the UnitedHealth Group, which provides long-term health care.”
The Self-Employed Depression
“An increasing number of people followed such calls to the logical end of self-employment in the decade before the recession. Nationally between 1995 and 2005, the number of self-employed independent contractors grew by 27 percent, to almost nine million workers. The category includes freelance workers and consultants — people who tell the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics that they obtain work on their own but don’t own a business like a restaurant or a shop. New York City has more than its share of the self-employed: 720,000 in 2004, representing 16 percent of the city’s work force, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.”
Goodbye Economy, Hello Balance
“Among the concerns brought on by the failing economy, a healthy work/life balance for lawyers ranks down at the bottom of the list. Gone are the days when firms needed to woo candidates with perks like a flexible career. Steady work and steady pay are the currency of the moment. Gone, too, are the days when employed lawyers might boldly decline work in the name of a saner and more balanced life. ‘No,’ ‘Not now,’ and ‘Too much’ aren't attitudes likely to engender goodwill in the next round of layoffs.”
Blogs
Corporate Voices' Study Demonstrates Benefits of Workplace Flexibility to Hourly Employees and Business
“When Michelle Obama attended the Corporate Voices for Working Families Annual Meeting in early May, she talked about the importance of work-life programs to working families and to the competitiveness of American business. In conjunction with Mrs. Obama’s talk, Corporate Voices released a comprehensive study that looks at workplace flexibility options and programs involving hourly employees, Innovative Workplace Flexibility Options for Hourly Workers. Recent research about the value of workplace flexibility has focused primarily on management and professional workers. This study finds that workplace flexibility initiatives, when available for hourly employees, are as successful as those designed for professional staff. It also demonstrates that businesses offering hourly employees flexible work options benefit through enhanced recruitment, retention, engagement, cost control, productivity and financial performance.”
Paid Parental Leave
“The baseline point, however, remains the same. It’s standard for countries to offer a certain amount of mandatory paid parental leave as a recognition of the special role parents play in our society (in effect, this measure lowers everyone’s wages slightly and then provides a benefit only to parents, thus enacting a small transfer of resources from non-parents to parents). In the United States, everything must surrender beneath the all-powerful God of flexible labor markets, and “pro-family” conservatives seem fine with that.”
New AARP study of older Latino workers
“The AARP released a new study today examining the older Latino work force and how these workers stack up to their white and African American counterparts. Latinos ages 50 to 69 are among the fastest-growing segments of the graying population and should make up one-fourth of all older Americans by 2050, according to the study. Of the 5.6 million Latinos in that age group living in the U.S., 3.2 million were employed in 2007. The study found that “mature” Latino workers were dependable and rarely missed work, in part because lower wages and lack of paid leave made taking time off difficult.”
New Parents Re-Entering the Workplace: The Importance of Supportive Colleagues
“The examples and attitudes of co-workers and bosses can have a profound impact on both a woman’s sense of identity and her career path when she returns to work after maternity leave, says the study, by Jamie Ladge, a professor of management and organizational development at Northeastern University. Dr. Ladge put under the microscope the experiences of 40 women who were back on the job after having babies, interviewing them in depth about ‘the re-entry period.’ Many women re-define their identity as women and as workers during this time, she says. In the process, many are unusually sensitive to their environment – to the role models around them, to their employers’ policies, and to co-workers and bosses’ attitudes, remarks and behavior.”
Who's a Stressed-Out Working Mom?
“As for this week’s question? Yes. I am a stressed-out working mom. I think being a parent in 2009 comes with an assumed level of stress, but I don’t say that to complain. There’s the stress that lays you flat and the stress that keeps you moving, and if I can keep mine in the second of those two categories, it works for me. I am also keenly aware of how lucky I am to work the way I do — from home, setting my own hours — and what a luxury it is to be able to use ‘stress’ in the same sentence as ‘a level I can control.’”
The Motherhood Penalty: Working Moms Face Pay Gap Vs. Childless Peers
“What is the wage penalty for working mothers when compared to women without children? Apparently it is a big one. While study after study focuses on the gender gap in wages, the pay gap between mothers and childless women is actually bigger than the pay gap between women and men, according to sociologist Shelley Correll, Stephen Benard, and In Paik. Their study, Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? received the 2008 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research at the World at Work conference this week in Seattle.”
Global News
Carers need the same rights as those on maternity leave
“The biggest single problem for carers in my experience is managing to sustain full-time employment. It's hard to justify continuing to go to work while needing to be at home to care for a loved one and I found obtaining a sensible balance impossible. Both Jane and I were fortunate that our employers – Leeds Hospital trust and Yorkshire Bank – were supportive of our circumstances. So often I have heard of people who have been discriminated against in the workplace. It's inevitable that the more serious the condition, the more time is needed away from the workplace and it is clear that some employers use the opportunity of workplace restructures to cull such staff.”
Women are victors in 'mancession'
“THE economic crisis is sweeping away men’s jobs at a faster rate than those of women in America, heralding the onset of a so-called “mancession”. New unemployment figures have revealed the biggest gap in jobless rates between men and women for more than half a century. The shifting pattern is redefining gender roles and challenging the status of men as family breadwinners. Tony Hawkins, 48, was laid off by his lorry manufacturing plant in North Carolina after 22 years. “You could kind of feel it coming, but you think, well, you’ll be okay, when all of a sudden, boom!” His wife Johnnie works from home as a book-keeper. She is trying to increase her workload while he does the cooking and minds the house.”