October 2, 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
Most Stay-at-Home Moms Start That Way, Study Finds
“A first census snapshot of married women who stay home to raise their children shows that the popular obsession with high-achieving professional mothers sidelining careers for family life is largely beside the point. Instead, census statistics released Thursday show that stay-at-home mothers tend to be younger and less educated, with lower family incomes. They are more likely than other mothers to be Hispanic or foreign-born. Census researchers said the new report is the first of its kind and was spurred by interest in the so-called ‘opt-out revolution’ among well-educated women said to be leaving the workforce to care for children at home.”
The Harried Life of the Working Mother
“Women now make up almost half of the U.S. labor force, up from 38% in 1970. This nearly forty-year trend has been fueled by a broad public consensus about the changing role of women in society. A solid majority of Americans (75%) reject the idea that women should return to their traditional roles in society, and most believe that both husband and wife should contribute to the family income. But in spite of these long-term changes in behaviors and attitudes, many women remain conflicted about the competing roles they play at work and at home. Working mothers in particular are ambivalent about whether full-time work is the best thing for them or their children; they feel the tug of family much more acutely than do working fathers. As a result, most working mothers find themselves in a situation that they say is less than ideal.”
Group Marches In Support of Paid Sick Days
“Hundreds of lawmakers, workers and advocates rallied Thursday in support of a bill requiring businesses to pay workers for sick days. Make the Road New York organized the march, which began in Brooklyn Heights and ended in downtown Manhattan. The community group estimates 1.2 million workers in New York don't get paid sick leave.”
At 60 M.P.H., Office Work Is High Risk
“Mr. Dekok may be rethinking how he works on the road, but tens of thousands of Americans barely give it a second thought. They have turned their cars, vans and trucks into mobile offices, wired with phones and computers to stay in close touch with bosses and customers. On Wednesday, the Transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, called the broader phenomenon of distracted driving a ‘deadly epidemic’ at a meeting on the issue in Washington. Real estate brokers, pharmaceutical sales people, entrepreneurs, marketers and others say they have little choice but to transform their cars into cubicles. In this merciless economy, they say, they have to make every minute count, and respond instantly to opportunities and challenges.”
State to mom: Stop baby-sitting neighbors' kids
“Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood's children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school. Regulators who oversee child care, however, don't see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she'd be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers. [. . .] Snyder's predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.”
Blogs
Revisiting the Opt-Out Revolution
“So here’s a modest proposal: maybe we should stop arguing so much about whether women are staying home in greater numbers and focus instead on the policy questions. How can companies be persuaded, or pushed, to make part-time work a more serious options for both mothers and fathers? How can part-time work — or, for that matter, years spent outside the labor force — become less of a career killer? What can be done to encourage more fathers to take paternity leave? How can we create better, more comprehensive pre-school programs, so that middle-class and poor parents of 3- and 4-year-olds can feel more comfortable working full time?”
Surprise! The "opt-out revolution" was a myth
“Can I have a show of hands from all the readers out there who have always known that Lisa Belkin's ‘opt-out revolution’ was pure fiction? Of course, this isn't exactly news in the Broadsheet universe: Salon's own Joan Walsh -- a lady who can certainly speak to the experience of moms with high-powered careers -- jumped on the story when it first surfaced, nearly six years ago. Since then, we've been reporting on scholars, from family-studies professors to economists, who take issue with Belkin's claims. But guess what? Now we've got definitive proof that the ‘opt-out revolution’ never happened: census data.”
Happyless: What's up with women these days?
“But living in a country with no paid parental leave, no public child care, a fierce Mommy-track, and an intensive parenting culture, I just don’t know of many women who didn’t have to give up something. At the very least, give up more than the men in their lives did. So what’s a girl living in a ‘postfeminist’ world to do these days? Do I focus on my career, at the supposed expense of my future children? Will I be able to find a partner who will share the responsibilities at home, take an equal amount of parental leave, relocate if my career necessitated it? Or should I be pragmatic and focus on creating a “flexible” career for myself, one that will allow me to combine work and family life with greater ease, but probably at the expense of prestige and pay?”
The Daddy Factor
“Sweden is one of the most feminism-influenced countries on earth. It has the world’s highest share of women in parliament (basically half) and what shows up in that kind of statistic is also visible on the streets. Sweden has both a high female labor force participation rate, and a total fertility rate that’s high by developed world standards. The way that happens seems to be in part that men do closer to their fair share of caregiving for children.”
National Work & Family Month - The New Emphasis on Fatherhood
“October is National Work & Family Month. It is a time to remember the challenges millions of Americans face in balancing their work and family lives and to issue a call to action to do something about it. Work-life balance is a significant issue for most Americans. Polls show that more than 80% of Americans experience conflicts between their work and family lives. The impact on families is significant. Today's parents multitask to the point that children cite "uninterrupted time with parents" as their primary need. Older workers want and, in this economy, need to keep working, but want to do so in a different way than in the past.”
Global News
Flexible working: employees could turn extra hours into paid leave
“Labour is to extend its work-life balance agenda by giving workers the right to accumulate paid leave lasting as long as a year. The proposal is contained in the party's pre-election manifesto, The Choice for Britain, released today. The measure for extended paid leave is based on what the document describes as the Dutch leave model. Under the proposal, workers would reach a contractual agreement with their employer to work longer than their specified hours and then be allowed to take the time accumulated as extended leave. A government source said: ‘The aim is to extend the flexibility agenda beyond mothers and fathers to everyone in the workplace.’”
Now is the time to axe this mother of daft laws
“Two English mothers, who gave birth within a few months of one another, had a private arrangement to take care of each other's daughter two days a week as part of their job share. Everyone involved was happy. [. . .] You'd think that these resourceful women should have been applauded and held up as examples to us all for finding such a simple solution to a real modern-day dilemma in the true spirit of companionship and community - and you'd be right. Of course, it did work perfectly for a while - until the bureaucrats at Ofsted, the education watchdog, got wind of it. [. . .] His conclusion? That they were 'running an illegal child-minding business' and, unless the arrangement ended immediately, they would be prosecuted.”
Conservatives tackle flexible working and parental leave at conference
“The Conservatives will today reiterate their plans for improved flexible working and parental leave at a conference in London discussing the future of work. Shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May will call for a further extension to the right to request flexible working, and to outline plans to allow parents to divide the current period of maternity leave - 39 weeks - between them. In a brief essay put forward to the Working Families conference, published today, May calls for the right to request flexible working to be extended to parents with children aged 18 or under - two years older than the recent government review allowed.”