October 27, 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
When Returning to Work Is Harder Than It Seems
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in September the average amount of time a laid-off worker spends unemployed was a staggering 6.5 months. Of course, most people would much prefer the hustle—and even the stress—of work. But despite the hardships of long-term unemployment, many people find the time off a pleasant surprise and take advantage of the lax schedule between job-hunting activities. Out-of-work professionals have found themselves using their free time for everything from family bonding and reconnecting with old friends to spending more time at the gym. That can make the transition back to the daily grind a big adjustment.”
SEC commissioner manages a high-profile job, her health, too
“Elisse Walter landed the job of her dreams last year when President George W. Bush appointed her to the Securities and Exchange Commission, capping a career devoted to securities law and investor protection. Weeks later, she got a nightmare diagnosis: ovarian cancer. What followed was months of juggling the demands of surgery, chemotherapy and a new post that put her at the center of the nation's economic meltdown. Now back at work full time, she talks about the lessons she learned and strategies she employed to handle a high-powered job while dealing with a personal crisis — a situation that others also face in their lives.”
Work/Life Balance Is Not a Woman's Issue
“For all of our progress on framing the issue, however, one challenge remains largely unmet. We have yet to figure out a way to tag these issues as critical to both women and men. We have to stop using ‘work/life balance’ as coded language for ‘working-mom stress.’ Despite ample evidence that men are served by investing more time and energy outside the workplace and ‘coming out’ as fathers while in it, there are very few men who are taking on this issue in a substantive, political way.”
Dinah Cohen: Helping wounded veterans re-enter workforce
“It's not easy for a wounded veteran returning from Afghanistan or Iraq to secure a civilian job but Dinah Cohen and her team at the Defense department's Computer Electronic Accommodation Program (CAP) are working with medical experts to change that. By providing specialized computers software and electronics to veterans who are hearing and visually impaired, they work to make veterans more marketable to employers.”
SEC, Homeland Security need Web backup, GAO says
“Securities exchanges have a sound network back-up if a severe pandemic keeps people home and clogging the Internet, but the Homeland Security Department has done little planning, Congressional investigators said on Monday. The department does not even have a plan to start work on the issue, the General Accountability Office said. But the Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, sucking up valuable bandwidth. Experts have for years pointed to the potential problem of Internet access during a severe pandemic, which would be a unique kind of emergency. It would be global, affecting many areas at once, and would last for weeks or months, unlike a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake.”
Bosses of America, how about coughing up a few paid sick days? Connie Schultz
“In a perfect world, no working American would get sick with the H1N1 virus. Alas, perfection eludes us. In a slightly less perfect world, workers in America who got the flu would not infect friends, colleagues and total strangers because their bosses would recognize the benefit to their businesses and the employees still standing when highly contagious workers are allowed to recover at home without losing a day's pay. It's called paid sick leave. Yeah, well. That whole more-perfect-union thing looks great on parchment, but we have a way to go before we reach that little patch of colonial nirvana.”
65 and Up and Looking for Work
“It is well known that during the nation’s gale-force recession, many older Americans who dreamed of retirement continued to work, often because their 401(k)’s had plunged in value. In fact, there are more Americans 65 and older in the job market today than at any time in history, 6.6 million, compared with 4.1 million in 2001. Less well known, though, is that nearly half a million workers 65 and older want to work but cannot find a job — more than five times the level early this decade and this group’s highest unemployment level since the Great Depression.”
The Mismeasure of Woman
“For the first time, women make up half the work force. The Shriver Report, out just last week, found that mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. We have a female speaker of the House and a female secretary of state. Thirty-two women have served as governors. Thirty-eight have served as senators. Four out of eight Ivy League presidents are women. Great news, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, it couldn’t be more spectacularly misleading. The truth is, women haven’t come nearly as far as we would have predicted 25 years ago. Somewhere along the line, especially in recent years, progress for women has stalled. And attitudes have taken a giant leap backward.”
Blogs
Kids See Housework as Women's Domain
“More research on chores shows that not only do girls do more of them and get paid less for them than boys, but also that the time kids spend on them is directly related to the number of hours their father is at work. Contance Gager, a sociologist at the department of family and child studies at Montclair State University, reports in the November issue of The Journal of Family Issues that for each extra hour a father spends at work, his children do two more minutes of housework a week on average. That relationship between parental time at work and a child’s time on chores does not hold true, however, for mothers. (There were 3,560 families in the study.)”
Should Businesses Be Encouraged to Offer More Part-Time Jobs?
“In a particularly bold move, the British government is also considering extending flexible working laws -- which allow employees to ask their current boss if they can reduce their hours -- to future employers as well. This would mean that someone who is offered a full time job would be able to ask -- up front -- to adjust his or her hours around, say, managing a school run. While companies would be allowed to refuse such requests, they would need to provide a rational business case for doing so. This series of proposals represents a major shift in policies affecting family life in Britain. And they are significant on three fronts, for Brits and Americans alike.”
More Part-Time Jobs? Not Without Health Care Reform
“Without either employer-derived health insurance or a government plan, most part-time workers -- even the rapidly growing number of those who work full-time hours at multiple part-time jobs -- either have to do without insurance or purchase their own. And the individual insurance market is a brutal place for women. Only ten states prohibit insurance companies from gender discrimination in pricing. if you're not lucky enough to live in one of those states, your gender is going to cost you quite a bit over your lifetime. According to the National Women's Law Center, if a woman is 25, the same insurance plan will cost her anywhere between 6 percent and 45 percent more than what her male counterparts pay. At 40, she'll be paying between from 4 percent to 48 percent more. It's only in the over-55 bracket that women's health insurance costs start to be outpaced by men's costs, to the tune of 8 percent to 22 percent less.”
Work-Life Balance: Good for Workers, Good for Business
“Most of us moms and dads have known intuitively that getting the flexibility we need at work makes us loyal to our employers. Let us leave early on Fridays and we’ll work even harder the rest of the week. Now a new report shows that businesses benefit financially from helping their employees achieve work-life balance. New research by Morgan Redwood, an expert in talent development, reveals that businesses that help staff achieve a good work-life balance enjoyed net earnings per employee of 23 percent more per year than the average for those who don’t. The Morgan Redwood researchers, who surveyed 100 businesses in the United Kingdom, believe this boost in the bottom line is because better work-life balance reduces absenteeism, improves well-being, and increases productivity.”
Global News
Balancing work and life
“IF THERE'S a book in everyone, then there is probably a cook in there, too. And perhaps even a knitter, an interior designer or a yoga instructor. A more relaxed consumer keen on developing new and interesting hobbies might eventually earn a crust from what has emerged from the global financial crisis, according to new research. These so-called ‘potentialists’ - some in their 30s but usually in their 40s or 50s - are consumers happy to put up with an old bomb of a car or a smaller television in order spend their extra income on hobbies or developing skills, with cooking and writing the most popular, that could help them to swap careers.”
Bosses to be told to offer more part-time work for parents
“Employers will be expected to offer more part-time jobs for working parents under a major shift in government thinking on family life. The move is likely to provoke an outcry from business and accusations that ministers are not taking into account the financial burden of extending workers' rights during a recession. Yvette Cooper, the work and pensions secretary, wants firms that advertise full-time posts in jobcentres to consider opening them up to job sharers or part-time workers. However, the Observer understands senior ministers are also considering proposals to extend flexible working laws – which allow parents to ask only their current boss if they can reduce their hours – to future employers. That could permit a woman applying for a new job to ask first about changing her hours to fit school runs, for example.”
Can dads take their leave?
“The reality for most working fathers is that, although they would like to spend more time with their children, they continue the nine-to-five slog right through their children’s growing-up years. Even though many parents are sharing the child-rearing more equally, and dads are getting more involved with their kids, most working fathers find there is no flexibility in their job to allow them to be a more active parent.”