Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Work-Life on NPR
NPR is running a series this week on work-life balance. Today's reports focus on flexible work schedules and low-wage workers. Joan Williams, Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at U.C.-Hastings, is featured prominently.
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https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2010/03/worklife-on-npr.html
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Flexible Resources is a consulting firm founded 20 years ago by two baby boomer women to help create flexible work arrangements at the professional level. Nadine Mockler and Laurie Young, the founders of principals, are authors of "The End of Work As We Know It" and have always maintained that flexible work arrangements should not be reserved only for working moms, but for all employees regardless of why they need them. For one, that creates resentment toward moms, and secondly, it smacks of discrimination. Nadine and Laurie have been so successful in getting both large and small businesses to sign on for flexibility by demonstrating the bottom-line effectiveness of FWAs, including greater productivity, greater focus and commitment, reduced absenteeism and turnover, and specifically by allowing telecommuting, companies can build a workforce that logs in 2-4 more productive hours per day, and employers who report far greater contentment with their jobs. Telecommuting also greatly enhances a companies 'green' profile, keeping workers off the roads and reducing commuting time, congestion and pollution.
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Posted by: Joyce Fredo | Mar 17, 2010 4:44:34 PM
Rick, I thought it was a good series overall, and I'm glad that NPR devoted a segment to lower wage workers and shift work. However, I was disappointed in the focus on management discretion in fostering family-friendly work policies, to the exclusion of the actual and potentially greater role of unions in negotiating better working arrangements.
The segment opens with the story of a worker who was fired after refusing to work overtime so she could register her kids at school. It goes on to mention that after a year of fighting her employer, she was reinstated, with the support of her union. Somehow that thread was lost in the rest of the piece.
Posted by: David Yamada | Mar 17, 2010 6:08:39 AM