yolland
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This is pursuant to a recent thread about the fate of mothers in the job market--only here the focus is blue-collar families, rather than professional women. What follows is a few excerpts from a study just released by the Center for WorkLife law, a U.Cal-based advocacy group. The whole report is available at http://www.uchastings.edu/site_files/WLL/onesickchild.pdf
I thought about just deleting the personal stories to make this post shorter, and I did cut a few, but ultimately they are too integral to the points being made here to be wholly left out.
I think it is sick to regard wanting a more fair and compassionate deal for these folks as "discriminatory" towards workers who don't have kids or ailing relatives to care for. Or to cast it as "Well that's your own damn problem for deciding to have kids to begin with--get your priorities straight and stop screwing your employer over." How can we rightfully claim to stand for a better economic future for all, when we allow such thinking to paint the very people who are providing and nourishing the human material for that future, into such an unforgiving economic corner?
I thought about just deleting the personal stories to make this post shorter, and I did cut a few, but ultimately they are too integral to the points being made here to be wholly left out.
Now in a few of these cases, I can certainly see where employees' own failures to adequately forewarn their employers of their problems probably contributed to the situation. And yes, there need to be some limits as to how much spillover from personal/family problems an employer can fairly be expected to accommodate. But overall, my main impression after reading all this is of a pattern of heartlessness and utter irresponsibility towards workers as human beings, whose needs and worth amount to more than the labor their hands provide.One Sick Child Away From Being Fired
Professional women are not the only Americans whose jobs are in jeopardy because of work/family conflict. This report discusses a study of 99 union arbitrations that provide a unique window into how work and family responsibilities clash in the lives of men and women in working-class jobs. The arbitrations communicate the stories of Americans caught between inflexible jobs, lack of resources, and their commitment to do right by their families. Here are our major findings:
1) Working class families face inflexible schedules that clash with family needs.
A bus driver was fired when she arrived 3 minutes late because her severely asthmatic son had had an asthma attack. A packer was fired when she left work in response to a call that her daughter was in the emergency room with a head injury. A press operator at the Chicago Tribune, who was the primary caregiver for her mother, came to work late because she said she was up until midnight monitoring her mother's blood pressure, which was dangerously out of control. She returned home to find that her 1-year-old was having trouble sleeping, and fell asleep while rocking the child in a rocking chair. The next morning she overslept, called in to report she would be late, but was fired when she arrived 20 minutes late.
20% of American families are caring for a child with special needs; 30% of these caregivers either reduce their hours or end up without work as a result. When family crises strike, these families do not have the resources to hire help or seek out professional care for needy or troubled family members. A single mother who worked for the Chicago Transit Authority was fired for tardiness stemming chiefly from her son's Crohn's disease. Each morning she had to unhook her son from his IV, bandage him, administer medication, get him off to school, take two buses to take her toddler to his babysitter, and then take a third bus to get to work. When she was late, she often worked through her lunch hour to make up the time. The Transit Authority allowed her to come 30 minutes late, but given the lack of suitable child care and other social supports, she ultimately lost her job.
Another important right these families often lack is one that professional workers take for granted: to make a phone call home, especially in the summer, when 1 in 10 children aged 6-12 is home alone or with a sibling under 13. [And here I thought I was being good by refraining from indulging in blue crack during my open office hours!--yolland]
2) Mandatory overtime leaves single mothers, divorced dads, and tag team families in jeopardy of losing their jobs. In a high-hours economy, single mothers often face no-win situations. Tenneco Packaging Burlington Container Plant involved a janitor who was the divorced mother of a 17-year old son with the mentality of an 18-month old. She had failed to report to work one Saturday when her son's caregiver could not work because her own child was sick. The janitor had been working 60-hour weeks for months. She was fired after 27 years' service.
Divorced dads face often discipline or discharge due to mandatory overtime. In Marion Composites, a factory worker was suspended three days for insubordination when he left after 8 hours of a 12-hour overtime shift. He was, according to the arbitrator, "an excellent employee who consistently worked overtime when asked to do so...He was never absent. He accepted overtime whenever the Company needed him. Indeed, his dedication to his work placed him in a situation that may have jeopardized his family responsibilities." When first asked to work overtime, he said he could not because he was "tired and worn out"–his wife had recently left him, and he had been so upset he had been feeling ill. Later that afternoon, he said he would help out the company, but that he could only stay for 8 hours because he had to get home to care for his 2 children. He stayed after the 8 hours was up, but became "distraught" after receiving a call from his wife, and left after 8 hours and 20 minutes. He was suspended for 3 days.
Overtime also poses problems for "tag team" families, where dad and mom work opposite shifts and each care for the kids when the other is at work. Tag teaming makes the design of overtime systems a major work/family issue. At U.S. Steel Corp., a factory worker stated that when his regular babysitter was sick, he preferred that his wife take off work because his wife's employer had a stricter absenteeism policy; he was suspended for 15 days for an unexcused absence.
3) Working class men often are unable or unwilling to bring up their family needs with their employers. Instead, they suffer in silence or to try to "come in under the radar screen" with unhappy results. In Tractor Supply Co., a grandfather was fired for insubordination when he refused to stay at work past his regular shift because he had to get home to care for his grandchild. That worker was reinstated by the arbitrator, but a UPS package delivery driver was not so lucky when he was fired for "theft of time" when he took off an extra hour and a quarter on 2 different days without telling his supervisors. He explained: "I took a 3-week vacation when my second son was born...Prior to this my wife had quit her job due to early contraction and had difficulty her last trimester. I was working up to 50–60 hrs week...At times, I was to return...[to work] with just 8 hours off in between. Barely enough time to sleep or recuperate...On my vacation time, with my new baby boy and my 2 ½ year old, my wife was laid up...recuperating...I had even less sleep...I was taking care of my two kids while I let my wife rest...Since [then] things haven’t calmed down [but] I returned to work...since I can no longer afford to be off for so long. One week later my wife got sick due to an infection...[and] ended up with a temperature of 104...Meanwhile, my first son was coughing and had the flu. As the newborn is still feeding every two hours, I was getting by on 2-3 hours of sleep a day...[I went] home and spent my lunch and breaks there to make sure every one at home was okay. But I lost track of time...My intention was [to be] there for my family but not to steal time, as I was accused of." He pointed to his two years of service, and said "I've always given the best of my ability to get the job done...Taking away my job from me has put my family in a financial hardship. I cannot survive with having 2 babies. And my wife being out of work. I deeply regret for what I’ve done, but I need my job back." He was fired.
4) Many workers are one sick child away from being fired. The union movement often views work/family issues as a luxury item rather than a central bargaining and organizing issue. In fact, work/family issues are core union issues, given that American workers rely heavily on family members to provide care for family members. In the absence of union protection, workers are vulnerable to discipline or discharge for doing what any conscientious parent, child, or spouse would do. Unions should use their ability to protect workers who need to fulfill their family responsibilities as a valuable organizing tool.
5) Employers’ inflexibility may well defeat their own business needs. The business case for family-responsive policies, almost always framed in terms of the need to retain highly trained professionals, may be even more pressing in the working-class context. The business case for family-responsive policies in the working-class context includes: improved quality and consumer safety; improved worker engagement and commitment, which has a direct link to profits; enhanced customer service and productivity; reduced stress, which drives down health insurance costs; cost savings due to enhanced recruitment and decreased turnover and absenteeism; and avoiding a loss of employer control in unionized workplaces. One example of the business case is an arbitration in which a quality control technician was required to report for work despite the fact that the hospital had instructed him that his wife, who had just had a miscarriage, should not be alone for the first 24 hours. The technician, who was 56 and had 15 years of seniority, became rattled when he called home and his wife did not answer the phone. He was fired after he failed to properly inspect carton seals but signed inspection forms saying he had done so.
6) Flexibility is possible in working-class jobs. We often hear that flexible work options "just aren’t possible" in working-class jobs. This misconception stems from the assumption that the only available model of workplace flexibility consists of individualized arrangements negotiated between an individual worker and an individual supervisor. That model, developed for professionals, often is unsuitable for nonprofessionals. Nonetheless, both employers and workers stand to benefit when workplaces provide flexibility for nonprofessionals.
This report finds five crucial steps any employer can take to help match the workplace to today’s workplace, including (1) providing family leave as required by law; (2) creating additional leaves to address work/family conflict, rather than leaving workers only with the option of calling in sick when they need to care for family members; (3) designing family-responsive overtime systems; (4) providing reduced hours and other flexible work options, and (5) recognizing that workplace inflexibility hurts the bottom line. Our report ends by outlining the specific kinds of workplace flexibility that are feasible and cost-effective in working-class jobs.
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These arbitrations help explain why nearly one-third of all unionized employees surveyed--men as well as women--said that their biggest work-related concern was not having enough time for family and personal life. And these workers are the lucky ones: the 92% of American workers who are not unionized have no appeal. Their fate is dramatized by two incidents from California. (1) When a California restaurant worker’s child care fell through, she brought her daughter to the restaurant, where the child sat at an empty table while she completed her day’s work. Her boss said nothing, but fired her at the end of the day. (2) A California father took a day off work to enroll his son in grade school when his son came to live with him because his ex-wife was incarcerated. He called his employer to say that he had a family emergency, and his employer responded that he could not take the day off. When the dad reported for work the following day, he had lost his job.
This study holds important messages for the media and for policymakers, as well as for unions and employers. For the media, the report raises the question of whether work/family conflict should continue to be reported chiefly as a problem faced by professional women. The media would never cover unemployment by interviewing a handful of Yale students or a few laid-off friends from Princeton. Yet that’s how it typically covers work/family conflict, which also involves a major economic issue: in an era when 70% of households have all adults in the labor force, workplaces still often assume an ideal worker without child or other family care issues. In addition--and most importantly--the media’s overly autobiographical approach to covering work/family conflict has a negative impact on public policy.
For policymakers the crucial message is that work/family conflict is not just a professional women’s issue. Americans’ conflicts are so acute because of the lack of affordable child care, paid family leaves, limits on mandatory overtime, and scheduling flexibility that are available in other countries. Similar proposals in the U.S. will lack a constituency in the U.S. so long as work/family conflict is understood as "just a professional women’s problem."
I think it is sick to regard wanting a more fair and compassionate deal for these folks as "discriminatory" towards workers who don't have kids or ailing relatives to care for. Or to cast it as "Well that's your own damn problem for deciding to have kids to begin with--get your priorities straight and stop screwing your employer over." How can we rightfully claim to stand for a better economic future for all, when we allow such thinking to paint the very people who are providing and nourishing the human material for that future, into such an unforgiving economic corner?
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