Needed: Family-Friendly Workplaces

by James Parks, Mar 25, 2007

U.S. families are working longer and harder and enjoying it less. Every morning, millions of parents try to coordinate schedules so everyone gets to work and school on time before rushing off to work for what probably will be a longer than eight-hour shift.

If they’re lucky, one of the parents will be able to pick up the child at daycare and be home to make sure the children do their homework and eat a decent dinner before going to bed. And if they’re really lucky, the other parent will get home in time to help or to at least spend a few minutes with the other partner before they both drop off to sleep so they can start all over again tomorrow morning.

All this to earn a paycheck that is the same or smaller (when adjusted for inflation) than it was last year while the cost of everything is going up.

American Prospect’s special report on the state of the American family, Mother Load: Why Can’t America Have A Family-Friendly Workplace?, explains that while the vast majority of mothers of young children are now in the paid labor force, workplace policy has not kept pace with the needs of a changing workforce.

Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, puts it this way:

Compared to a generation ago, families have lost 539 hours per year to the U.S. economy—13.5 weeks of full-time work. Where did the hours go? Intuitively, we all know the answer: Mom got a job. But while families put in more hours at work than their parents did, their inflation-adjusted incomes are only a tad higher. And, when you adjust for the additional hours worked, median living standards are actually lower. Because Mom works, families have been able to keep their incomes from falling—but, this doesn’t mean that the economy is working for families.

Families are angry, frustrated and confused about this time grab, Boushey writes. She cites a study by the Families and Work Institute in New York, that shows two-thirds of parents say that they don’t have enough time with their children and nearly two-thirds of married workers say that they don’t have enough time with their spouse. Nearly half of all employees with families report conflicts between their job and their family lives, more so than a generation ago.

Today’s workplace often seems stuck in a time warp, modeled for Ward and June Cleaver, when the reality feels more like TV’s “Survivor,” says Jodie Levin-Epstein, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy.

Some employers have adapted and made their workplaces responsive to working parents with flexible scheduling that considers employee preference and paid time off. But many companies’ policies collide with “family values,” Levin-Epstein says.

If Wal-Mart mandates a shift without notice, what happens to the worker’s family when the 10-year-old must make dinner and tuck in the toddler? And what does it say about family values when parents lose wages—or even jobs—if they take a day to care for a sick loved one?

One-third of the respondents to the AFL-CIO’s Ask a Working Woman survey work evenings, nights and weekends. Two in five women work different shifts than their partners or husbands, and that percentage goes up among African American women: nearly half work different shifts than their significant other. Not only are they working erratic hours, working women also are holding more than one job. More than 20 percent of women surveyed work two or more jobs.

Government has an important role in fostering responsive workplaces for workers of all incomes, Levin-Epstein says. It should partner with business to make flexible scheduling commonplace, set minimum paid-leave standards and foster other family-friendly supports.

After all, the job of government is to sustain our nation’s productivity and to put in place policies more focused on the next quarter century than on the next quarterly return.

The union movement shares these goals. Last year, the AFL-CIO Executive Council reaffirmed our commitment to family-friendly workplaces:

America’s unions are committed to developing strong families…the labor movement …bargains and advocates for work-family balance, respect for family needs and time for working families to spend with our children. Key to working families who struggle every day to do what’s best for our children are good jobs with pay and benefits sufficient to support a family—without requiring second and third jobs—and control over work hours.

But achieving national policies that favor families will require political strength. And an untapped source of that power may be young workers, says Tamara Draut, director of economic opportunity at Demos.

Figuring out how to keep the paychecks coming in and how to take good care of their children is one of the most frustrating and financially challenging tasks for young adults in the 21st century, she says.

If activist groups were reaching out to younger families, their pulse would come not from the professional class, but from the juggling class. They would reach the young women who are balancing child rearing, low-wage jobs, and community college classes—a group for whom the anger, frustration, and hopelessness of trying to be a good parent in this go-it-alone society certainly might rise as they scramble to finish their history assignments in the dead of night.

So what do some really responsive workplaces look like? Levin-Epstein lists some practices that benefit both families and business:

• Flexible time that responds to employees’ needs can include compressed workweeks, job sharing, telecommuting and more.
• Online scheduling to allow employees to request preferred work hours and swap shifts with colleagues.
• “Eliminating the clock,” which gives employees nearly total autonomy over their workday schedules; their performance is measured by results and productivity instead of hours.
• Paid leave, child-care assistance and on-site child care.

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