May 15, 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.
Reports
Public Policy Platform on Flexible Work Arrangements
On Wednesday, May 13, Workplace Flexibility 2010 will release a comprehensive set of policy solutions to expand Americans’ access to flexible work arrangements such as compressed workweeks, predictable schedules, and telecommuting.
The report represents the culmination of a five-year process of listening to employer, employee and consumer representatives – and provides a detailed blueprint for the White House, Congress and other policymakers to build on innovative workplace flexibility strategies. It also provides numerous examples of effective business practices, and comes on the heels of First Lady Michelle Obama’s challenge to find ways to encourage employers to provide more flexibility to employees.
Articles
Paid Sick Days Bill Teed Up; Groups Start Dialogue on Flexibility
A case for paid sick days
“Concerns over the recent swine influenza virus appear to be cooling for the moment, but this shouldn't mean that we stop thinking about how to prevent communicable disease. Influenza is an annual and tragic event: Each year, 5 to 20 percent of the U.S. population gets seasonal influenza (the flu), more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications, and about 36,000 people die. Guaranteeing paid sick days to workers is an important step toward preventing spread of illness and promoting public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instructs people who get sick to stay home from work or school to keep from infecting others. For almost half of workers nationally, this is easier said than done. These workers, who do not earn any paid sick days, are asked to make an incredibly difficult choice: follow medical advice and lose pay or keep a job and potentially infect others.”
Report Urges U.S. Government To Boost Workplace Flexibility
“A report issued yesterday by a public policy group calls on the Obama administration and Congress to make the federal government "a model employer" by increasing its support for flexible work arrangements such as compressed workweeks and telecommuting. The call to "create a flexible fed" comes from Workplace Flexibility 2010, an initiative of Georgetown University Law Center. The group describes its report as the culmination of five years of discussions with employers, employees and consumer representatives. The report urges the federal government, the largest employer in the country with about 1.9 million workers, to "lead by example" by including flexible work arrangements as a key component of its personnel policies and by providing training, technical assistance and resources to support such arrangements.”
Why Women Lawyers Leave: A Quest for Flexible Work and Supportive Environments
“Dissatisfaction with work-life balance is pushing women lawyers in New Jersey out the door and into new jobs, a survey has found. Most of the respondents—almost two-thirds—said they were satisfied with their ability to integrate their work and personal lives and the predictability of their hours, according to a press release. But the numbers were different for women lawyers who had changed jobs in the last five years. More than 70 percent of the job-hopping lawyers said their previous employer was not supportive of full-time flexible alternatives, while only 30 percent described their current employer as unsupportive of such arrangements.”
Finding right formula for family and science
“Gina Wesley-Hunt, an alumna of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, was working as a postdoctoral researcher at a large museum when her position was terminated upon the announcement that she and her husband were expecting a child. Wesley-Hunt’s experience is just one example of how scientists with young families can struggle to balance family and careers, which is the subject of the upcoming event, ‘Motherhood & Success in Science & Engineering.’ ‘There are a lot of concerns from young women as to whether you can actually juggle between family and work in academia,’ said event co-organizer, Ka Yee Lee, Associate Professor in Chemistry and the College. ‘I think it is a very important issue, and I think that any correct and adequate support that any workplace can provide is very important to enhance the involvement of women in science.’”
Thurmont town board passes telecommuting policy
“Some town employees' commutes might get a lot shorter. The mayor and Board of Commissioners discussed and put into effect Thurmont 's new telecommuting policy Monday. Under the plan, employees will be allowed to perform some or all of their assigned duties at a location other than the town office during assigned work hours, according to the text of the policy. The work site is normally the employee's home.”
Calling for More Work/Life Balance
“First Lady Michelle Obama said she's just like any other working mother with two young children -- she struggles to find a balance between her work and personal life. [. . .] Increased work/life benefits would certainly sit well with employees. About four in 10 workers (41 percent) are dissatisfied with the level of work/life benefits being offered through their employer, according to a new poll released by Workplace Options, a work/life services provider in Raleigh, N.C. And nearly half (49 percent) would consider leaving their current job for one that offered better work/life benefits. In her speech, Obama also called for paid leave to deal with a serious illness in the family or the birth or adoption of a child.”
Attorneys argue merits of Milwaukee's sick leave ordinance
“Before a crowded courtroom Monday afternoon, lawyers from both sides of Milwaukee's controversial paid sick-leave ordinance faced off in what promised to be the first in a long line of legal battles over an issue being closely watched by employers and their employees. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Thomas Cooper, who listened to arguments for nearly three hours, said he expects to issue a written decision within 30 days. "This is an important issue for everybody, and I'll give it my best shot," he said. "But this is the first stage, and I believe the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court will probably weigh in." Cooper will be deciding whether he permanently should block the city from implementing the ordinance that requires all private employers in the city to provide paid sick leave for their workers.”
We're Getting Off the Ladder
“In this economy, Keehn's move might sound like hopping onto the mommy track — or off the career track. But he's actually making a shrewd move. More and more, companies are searching for creative ways to save — by experimenting with reduced hours or unpaid furloughs or asking employees to move laterally. The up-or-out model, in which employees have to keep getting promoted quickly or get lost, may be growing outmoded. The changing expectations could persist after the economy reheats. Companies are increasingly supporting more natural growth, letting employees wend their way upward like climbing vines. It's a shift, in other words, from a corporate ladder to the career-path metaphor long preferred by Deloitte vice chair Cathy Benko: a lattice.”
Blogs
Are Michelle Obama and Corporations on the Same Page for Working Familes?
“So that's why I have to wonder if these new efforts are just window dressing? Because, really, if employers had an epiphany that it made sense to be flexible, wouldn't they just do it? We wouldn't need another study or FLOTUS Michelle and her wonderful bully pulpit. A real work/life balance solution needs to start with making time and resources available, but there also needs to be a major shift in how employers view and treat their employees who dare to take it. I have a feeling that shift will take a little longer than Michelle's first four years in the White House.”
The Myth that Women Can "Have It All"
“In that sense, too, the problem that has no name has vanished into history, obliterated by the expressive individualism-positive and negative, temporary and lasting, cultural, political, and economic-of the 1960s and after. So why are we still dissatisfied? Why, at my own 25th reunion two years ago, did a panel of women bemoan the problems of work-life balance and wonder whether they'd made the right choices? Why the angst? There is, I'm afraid, another problem with no name-or, to be more accurate, a name we hate to speak. It is the problem of middle age, of realizing that life is full of tradeoffs and disappointments; of realizing that even the most satisfying life is never entirely as we dreamed. Having more choices doesn't guarantee happiness. It just gives you a better shot.”
More on the Juggle
“In last week's blog about how playwright Maria Zacarias balances her roles as mother and employee, many of you chimed in wishing that we in the media would talk to someone without flexible schedules, someone who works in an office every day. So, please welcome Moira, who stepped up to the plate. Moira is a senior consultant with client, business development and supervisory responsibilities with a health policy consulting firm in Falls Church. Her husband is an attorney at the Department of Justice.”
The Unexpected Benefits of Cutting Back
“Slow is hot. In recent years, movements have sprouted to explore slow food, slow sex, and slow family living. It’s a bit hard to fathom what exactly “slow” means in all these contexts. There’s a bit of pro-green living here, anti-materialism, mindful awareness, and community-building, all of which loosely adds up to a slowing down in the tempo of life, or at least finding a speed other than high gear. The idea is hard to define, yet also hard to ignore at this moment in time, when so many complex, high-gear economic, medical, education and other systems seem broken. Curious about the intersection between the recession and rise of slow, I recently interviewed families around Boston for my Globe column about whether their personal budget cuts had inspired slower living. The answer was a resounding yes. Some parents were already trying to simplify, by downshifting kid schedules or getting more eco-conscious, and job losses/pay cuts invigorated these efforts.”
Global News
Escape the office for one day
“Stay home. Put on the kettle. Don't bother to shave or dress smartly. Tomorrow is national Work From Home day. Rather than jostling your way on to bus, train or tube, clear away the marmalade and prove you can carry out challenging tasks just as efficiently when out of the office. More than 3.5 million people work from home in the UK – a figure that has increased by more than 20% since 1997, according to the Office of National Statistics. Homeworking is most common in southern England and least popular in Scotland. Promoted by an alliance of the TUC, the CBI and IT companies, tomorrow is the UK's fourth national Work From Home day, designed to encourage people to stay away from their usual place of work.”
Leave for new dads a step still too far
“THE Productivity Commission wanted to give fathers two weeks' paid leave with their new babies — but that idea is on the backburner as the Government looks to contain the cost of its 2009-10 budget spending. The Government has promised to implement a paid parental leave scheme from January 1, 2011, in which mothers earning less than $150,000 will be paid the federal minimum wage of $543.78 a week for 18 weeks. But in an effort to contain costs of the scheme, both for employers and taxpayers, fathers will miss out on the two weeks' paid leave initially recommended by the Productivity Commission.”