In the November/December issue of the Washington Monthly, Judith Warner of the Center for American Progress has a piece on the importance of passing national paid family leave legislation. Parents are more involved in their children’s lives than ever but they’ve never had less time to tend to their families. The resulting stress is reducing female participation in the economy and is now reportedly becoming a big problem for men, as well.
Surveys consistently show that work-life conflict in the United States is epidemic. The problem is due not only to the presence of mothers in the workforce but also to the increase in conflicting demands placed on fathers. According to the Families and Work Institute, a New York-based research group, men now report more work-family conflict than women, and while the percentage of women reporting some or a lot of work-family conflict has remained more or less stable over the past few decades, the percentage of men with such conflicts rose from 35 percent in 1977 to 60 percent in 2008.
Dual-earner married couples are working more hours, and lower income wage earners are subject to unpredictable and erratic work schedules. Either way, the result is a diminishment in the quality of life:
In November 2012, nearly three-quarters of respondents polled by the National Partnership for Women & Families said that they, their neighbors, and their friends experienced hardship in balancing high and often inflexible work demands with the equally high yet unpredictable responsibility of caring for family members at least somewhat often, and nearly 40 percent said they experienced such conflict “all the time” or “very often.” University of Minnesota sociologist Erin L. Kelly and her co-authors found that approximately 70 percent of Americans now report “some interference between work and non-work.”
This isn’t a strictly partisan issue, although the right claims more stay-at-home moms and certainly has a tendency to hold that up as the ideal. Overall, voters from the entire political spectrum are struggling with the same problem with having too many balls to juggle. And we know what results:
Work-family conflict has been linked to mental and physical health problems, including the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, poor sleep, depression, obesity, and addictive behaviors such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. It has also been associated with lower satisfaction with family, marriage, work, and life, generally.
Why not, then, take this issue to the voters in the 2016 campaign? Municipalities across the country, from Paterson, New Jersey to Seattle, Washington have already passed laws guaranteeing paid leave days that can be used for anything from taking a loved one to a doctor’s appointment to meeting with a counselor at your child’s school.
Why not present this to the electorate and see if they agree?
We know now that families’ mental, physical, and economic health depends not just on the presence but on the quality of parents’ work as well—how much control they have, and how much stress they bring home at the end of the day. In addition, relieving stress at home results in more productive employees in the workplace. American parents are overloaded to a breaking point. That’s a public health and economic risk we as a nation simply cannot afford.
It seems like a no-brainer to me.
While I’d obviously support it (and have it in my current job) I believe that mandating that for all jobs at all companies would instantly create $1B in Citizens United funds against candidates that support that. It may well be a fight worth fighting but know with certainty that increasing the cost of doing business will be a major fight.
Philly City Council passed such a law, only for Mayor Nutter to veto it. Nutter was doing the bidding of Comcast, of course. It’s one of the many reasons people can’t wait to get rid of him.
Doesn’t comcast have unionized workers?
No! They hate unions!
Question number 4 on the Massachusetts state ballot called for 40 hours of paid sick leave for all employees in businesses with eleven or more employees – and 40 hours of unpaid sick leave for all the rest. It passed overwhelmingly.
In support of Oscar’s point, though, there were three ballot questions ahead of it that sucked in the advertising money from the big boys – one to repeal the lege’s recent gas tax increase, one to halt the drive to three new casinos in the state, and one to expand the bottle bill beyond sodas and booze. The big ad money won each of those battles.
The fundamental law of American Capitalism is:
Flexible hours for bosses means being able to schedule work according to workload coming in and no having to pay for idle time; the employee is saddled with all of the risk of idle time.
Flexible hours for bosses means being able to go play golf and hob-nob with friends (with a veneer of business necessity) whenever the boss wishes, without paying a whole lot of attention to events they themselves have not scheduled. (That comes with the burden of protecting one’s time from lesser mortals, like some idiot employee trying to tell one about a major issue that could in fact bring the business down, but whatever).
Flexible hours for workers means having to hire more workers, just to ensure that critical workflow gets covered as well as the usual busywork. Hiring more workers means a larger labor bill and lower profits and more idle time covered by the business, and…
And it’s a fundamental threat to the idea that there is a class difference between bosses and employers.
Before the election of 2014, I would have thought this a great idea as long as it was not a single-item package but part of comprehensive economic benefits for ordinary Americans.
After November 4, I doubt that the Democratic Party has the will or the smarts, the media has the honesty, or the voters have the good sense for that proposal to swing votes to any candidate.
I thought a package of increased minimum wage, increases in Social Security benefits, ending deductibles, co-pays, preferred networks, and balanced billing, and restoring wage and hour laws in an enforceable form would have been no-brainers.
But what we have found out is that the Democratic leadership, the media, and one heck of the number of voters who turned out in November have no brain.
Voters did turn out for increased minimum wage initiatives. They got that along with their preferred GOP candidate that opposed it.
The difference was that there were no TV ads for or against minimum wage or, in Illinois, for against an additional 3% income tax on millionaires, or for or against mandatory contraceptive coverage in health insurance, all of which passed by over 80%. Unfortunately, the reason there were no ads was that these were “advisory” non-binding questions.
They were just being good bipartisan voters!
I understand the want. But in most workplaces it puts a greater burden on the childless and unmarried. In too many workplaces even accommodating scheduled vacations is problematical if a temp worker is not an option. Few mind much the occasional family emergency that adds to their workload. Employers aren’t about to staff up to 110% or more that would be needed to manage more easily vacations, emergencies and flexibility for parents. It’s also discriminatory against the childless.
As I say above, more generous benefits across the board, like the Europeans mandate, would benefit people with or without kids.
But assisting families with kids in general doesn’t “discriminate against the childless”. Family leave doesn’t discriminate against people – and there are many – that don’t have close family. Our society is made up of many sectors, one of which is families with children. There’s nothing wrong with policies that aim to help those families.
We need to get out of the us-against-them mentality that divides us against ourselves. Better family policies will benefit all of us in the long run.
We’re not talking about “generous benefits” — that’s lower on the USA “to do list” than public funding of elections, universal health care, etc.
Is paid maternity/paternity leave discrimination against the childless? Not that you’re arguing that, but it’s kind of where your argument is leading me.
Never considered viewing it that way. But childless people aren’t anti-social. We also pay taxes for and support schools that provide no direct benefit for one of “ours.” Or even that our whole tax and benefit structures are designed to favor the married with children.
Didn’t gripe or complain about the extra work (and hours) dumped on me to manage co-workers’ maternity leaves. Or even when office emergencies surfaced late in the day and those with children had to leave on time. However, as this issue is being presented as another benefit for parents, it falls into that old practice of paying men with families more for the same job than what single, childless men and women were paid. (A practice that probably hasn’t disappeared among salaried employees but isn’t as rampant as it once was.)
At a public policy level we don’t have universal paid maternity/paternity leave. We should, for two children anyway, because the ones least likely to get it are lower paid workers. If that were in place, no reason why those who opt out of parenting shouldn’t also be entitled to a sabbatical.
Simply because I am single childless woman whose parents are still in good health and frankly when it comes to flexible hours I often get the short end of the stick. The only way a proposal like this is fair is if the paid leave applies across the board – not just to parents or people taking care of their parents. That means us singles get the same amount of paid leave and if I want to take the afternoon off to go to a matinee then I get it off with the same consideration that someone who wants to go see their child’s play.
Nobody wants to see their child’s play.
Nobody wants to see somebody else’s child’s play. (Fixed it for ya.)
The main way to solve that is just generous across-the-board sick time and vacation benefits. That’s the direction the Europeans take.
But I don’t have problems with my tax dollars subsidizing or paying for child care, even if I don’t use it. That would benefit women everywhere in the end, by allowing more of us to succeed at work.
It would also decrease the crime rate, drug abuse rate, abortion rate, and high-school dropout rate.
Which is why it must be opposed, since it will clearly infringe on Freedumb.
My current job allows me to come and go as I please; come in at 10 (or 12 or 4 or whenever), leave as early as 3 (or as late as 9). All preconditioned on the fact that you make up the hours later, and come in at least four days of the week (if you wanna come in Saturday instead, you can). So long as you punch your 80 for the biweek, it doesn’t matter. Your boss also isn’t hanging over your shoulder to make sure you’re here. However, at the end of the quarter if your production is below 88%, you’re out on written warning. If you screw up again, you’re fired.
We also have a union.
I know such a system isn’t translatable to every field, sector, and job, but there are enough out there where this kind of thing can work. Is there abuse? Sure. But it works for estimated 98% who aren’t abusing it.
Also, is this proposal for only dealing with specific circumstances such as dealing with children? That’s not my understanding of it, nor is it how I would implement it. Obviously it depends from job to job — jobs requiring more team effort can’t have Joe coming in at 10 and leaving at 7 while Sally comes in at 6 and leaves at 3.
On that note, the workday should be reduced for the same pay.
Doubt there are many workplaces that would work just fine with the kind of flexibility you have that haven’t implemented it. But they are rare. Twenty years ago, the new thing that was going to revolutionize work was telecommuting. Sounded great. Mostly didn’t work well. That “water cooler” plays an important role.
We also have 24/7 work from home policy, but only after you’ve advanced far enough (if you’re really good, figure two years), and pass a certification exam.
I think the main issue is simply “trust workers.” I know so many people who complain to me how they could also do their jobs at home, and there’s no reason for them to go in. I see no real reason for them to go in, either. If you don’t have the discipline for it, that’s fine, but I imagine a good number would work just fine. Imo the research agrees.
Yahoo stripped their workers of the 24/7 work from home, which I suspect had less to do with the fact that it “wasn’t working” and more “we want to fire a lot of people but it’s much easier to just take away an awesome benefit and let them quit.”
Work flow, accountability, and equity are issues. If workers can handle work flow, accountability, and equity among themselves, there’s really no role for bosses, er managers, is there?
First, they came for the supervisors and I said nothing, because I wasn’t a supervisor.
Then they came for the owners, and I said nothing, because I didn’t own anything.
Then they instituted co-op policies making me an owner, and I finally got to speak up, and also started earning a decent wage based on productivity rather than what a non-contributing supervisor and owner thought I should make.
Had a work from home project just once. Our client didn’t have the facilities for us and frankly (this was a software project) we temps had far more powerful computer systems at home than the client had anywhere.
We were professional and didn’t abuse it. I was wonderfully productive. You know those days you just drag and don’t feel like working? I didn’t charge the client for them. Typically, I got up, had breakfast then went to my computer to work without struggling with rush hour traffic. Took a break when I wanted one and some days worked 12 or 14 hours straight when I was hot. Basically, I worked when I was ready, didn’t work when I wasn’t. If you rarely feel like working, you are in the wrong business. Most of our waking life revolves around work. Happy indeed is the person that enjoys their work. This can apply to so-called menial work too. Some people enjoy interacting with their customers. I’m more of a loner like most engineers, but many clerks and waitpersons enjoy their customers and the human interaction.
I’m also more productive at home. I don’t have a long commute as is (15 mins door to door, walking and metroing), but it definitely makes a difference. When I’m at work and 5:30-6:00 hits, I’m usually feeling like I just want to go home, even when I know I’m behind (like today…left at around 6:00 even though I have A LOT to do by Monday). When I’m at home? It’s not a worry because the kitchen is right upstairs for dinner/food, and right after I can go back to working.
Of course, always lurking behind the red cape of work-from-home, lies a Form-1099-MISC sword.
I’ve had legal jobs where I had to show up to the workplace, but was an “independent contractor” required to work at least 50 hours a week, with no overtime, no benefits, no paid leave, nothing.
While the pay was decent, I’m always weary of the subtle policies that lead people away from a slightly-more-secure “employee” position into temporary or independent contractor positions.
I was an employee with health insurance, vacation, 401K et cetera. I was also entitled to overtime, but didn’t claim it when I worked over 12 hours by choice unless I exceeded 40 hours in a week, which was always at the client’s request.
Most employers fear you will sit at home goofing off instead of working. I don’t know why when they can always fire you for not producing.
Fixed hours make sense in a team setting such as manufacturing. It doesn’t make much sense in most office situations. When I worked for International Harvester in the ’70s, the development people had flex hours but had to be in between 10:00AM and 2:00PM for continuity. Someone always had to be there between 8:00AM and 5:00PM. Most wanted the early hours, but I volunteered for 10:00AM to 6:30PM because I’m not a morning person, the roads were pretty clear around 9:00 and I had a long commute.
“Most employers fear you will sit at home goofing off instead of working. I don’t know why when they can always fire you for not producing.”
Because then managers would actually have to do their jobs. It’s the same as drug tests being pointless and a screen that blocks a lot of possible talent. Why are you drug testing people? You’re not giving them breathalyzers. Why? Because any fuckwit with an inkling of managerial skills can tell if you’re coming to the office piss drunk. But rather than actually have managers who can, you know, manage, they use drug tests to “screen” bad hires when all it does is poke noses into people’s provate life and weed out a lot of potentially good talent.
Drug screens are only profitable as long as cannabis remains illegal and a reason for not hiring/firing someone.
For almost all drugs minus marijuana (one of the most benign drugs you can put into your system), a weekend binge on Friday/Saturday is mostly cleared out by Monday/Tuesday.
Raging alcoholic who can forego alcohol for 8 hours Monday-Friday: perfect employee.
Cannabis smoker who can forego cannabis forever if need be, but doesn’t want to if he/she doesn’t have to: Future Worst Employee on the Planet.
There are so many bad laws and terrible policies that one of my radical dreams – a new Constitution – really isn’t all that radical, unless your’re a FramerOfTheConsitutionTM fondler.