Karen Kornbluh

The Joy of Flex

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

A generation or more ago, it would have been impossible to envision the life of the American worker as it is lived today. A flood of women into the workforce has fundamentally changed the face of employment, largely for the better. Families are better able to increase their household income, and companies have benefited from the ability to tap female talent. But at home, working Americans have a dwindling amount of time to spend with their families. The parent who was home in the afternoon when kids came back from school, or cared for family members -- young or old -- who fell ill, is now hard at work. A snow day now creates a parent's Hobson's choice: leave a child alone or call in sick and maybe risk losing your job.

The stress over how to strike a balance between work and family worries parents. A 2002 report by the Families and Work Institute found that 45 percent of employees say that work and family responsibilities interfere with each other, and 67 percent of working parents say they do not have enough time with their children. But it's not a problem limited to individual families -- the work-family puzzle concerns their fellow Americans as well. Last year, pollsters Anna Greenberg and Bill McInturff found that more than three-quarters of likely voters feel it is difficult for parents to earn enough and still have time for their families; 84 percent agreed that children are shortchanged when their parents have to work long hours.

The failure of the workplace to make accommodations for working parents is one of the biggest unmet demands of American voters. Shrewdly, Republicans understand this, but they have used it in order to promote a solution that doesn't solve the problem. During last year's presidential campaign, George W. Bush made a direct appeal to working mothers, running an ad in the final weeks that featured a mother driving home from work and growing increasingly exasperated as the radio told her that John Kerry would raise her taxes. To these mothers, Bush offered so-called "comp-time," which he claimed would help them balance work and family responsibilities by letting them choose time off instead of overtime pay as compensation for extra hours worked. But under Bush's plan, workers who accrued comp-time wouldn't have the freedom to decide when they would use it. Employers could make workers redeem the time when it was convenient for them, not for the employees.

There are, however, strategies that do give parents a way to both work and retain control over their own schedules without shortchanging their families -- everything from telecommuting to job-sharing to flextime. But these arrangements are primarily available to those with well-paying, white-collar jobs; more than half of all workers have no control over how their hours are scheduled. This may be the reason why politicians and policymakers have, for the most part, failed to focus on the work-family balance issue in a serious way. Not everyone has the same kind of malleable -- if still busy -- schedules they enjoy.

As the expectations and demands of the workplace have expanded over the past few decades, we have allowed onerous hours and schedules to become the norm, and we have assumed that employers have the right to demand that workers adapt to these harsh schedules or face the consequences. It's time to change the presumption that accepting a job means handing control of your life over to your employer. There is a clear role for the government here: expanding federal support for childcare and after-care, for instance. But there is also something that government can do that wouldn't be costly to the federal budget, something that employer groups would have a hard time opposing, and that is already working in the United Kingdom -- empower workers to ask for flexible scheduling themselves.

My job, my time

American politicians aren't the only ones who have to worry about appealing to soccer moms. Since the mid-1990s, the New Labour agenda has reflected an attempt to identify and address the concerns of working mothers -- and fathers. Five years ago, Tony Blair's government introduced an initiative intended to give working parents more flexibility without impinging on business competitiveness: the "Work-Life Balance Campaign."

The policy, which went into effect in 2003, works like this: Any parent with one or more children under the age of six, who has worked at least 26 consecutive weeks, has the right to file a written request with his or her employer for a change in working hours -- be that in the form of compressed hours, flex-time, telecommuting, job-sharing, shift-working, or staggered hours. The employee must explain exactly how the proposed schedule would work and offer solutions to any inconvenience that might be caused to the employer. For their part, employers are required to meet with any worker who has filed such a request within four weeks to discuss the proposed plan, and they must notify the employee of a decision within two weeks of that meeting.

This is a philosophical shift from the assumption that employers always have the right to dictate hours and employees are always required to accept the schedules they are assigned. But while it is fundamentally pro-worker, the policy is not anti-business. While workers may request a change in their schedules, employers are not obligated to approve the request. They may in fact refuse for a number of broad reasons, including the fact that an altered schedule would impose additional costs on the employer or harm a business' ability to meet consumer demand.

Today, the "Right to Request" policy is considered a great success by British businesses, workers, and the government. After the first year, nearly one-quarter of all eligible employees -- approximately 800,000 parents -- successfully reduced or rearranged their work hours. Out of all of the requests that were filed, 86 percent were granted either partially or in full. And the country's Association of Human Resources Managers found that most employers reported no significant problems in complying with the new legislation.

How did the British manage to take an antagonistic negotiation and turn it into a policy hailed by both employers and employees? For one thing, they cast the initiative as a cooperative venture, one through which productivity and families stood to benefit. Before the policy went into effect, the government launched a massive public education campaign aimed at convincing employers that happy employees are more productive employees. They encouraged the formation of an organization called Employers for Work-Life Balance, which allows businesses to share their solutions (or "best practices") for flexible scheduling. In addition, the government set aside funds to give as grants to employers who want to hire a consultant to help them implement the policy. The fact that the United Kingdom has strong labor unions and universal health care played a major role as well.

By requiring employers to explain in writing their reasons for declining a request for flexible work-time, the initiative also leverages a powerful social force: shame. Now employers must publicly state what they would prefer to keep quiet and unsaid. It's one thing to believe that business goals are more important than employee schedules; it's quite another to state for the record that you'd rather Jane didn't pick her children up from school because you prefer holding staff meetings at six in the evening. By throwing daylight onto some of the unreasonable burdens that have been placed on employees without any debate and without their agreement, the initiative creates a real dialogue between employers and employees.

Courting the wife vote

It's not a secret that Democrats have been losing ground among married women. Despite John Kerry's health-care plan, despite his message that Republican policies were squeezing the middle class, and his targeted child-care and after-school proposals, 55 percent of white working class women polled on Election Day said they trusted Bush to handle the economy; only 40 percent trusted Kerry.

Perhaps some of these women heard this part of Bush's stump speech: "The times in which we work and live are changing dramatically. The workers of our parents' generation typically had one job, one skill, one career, often with one company.... And most of these workers were men. Today... in one of the most dramatic shifts our society has seen, two-thirds of all moms also work outside the home. This changed world can be a time of great opportunity for all Americans to earn a better living, support your family, and have a rewarding career. And government must take your side."

Bush is right, but so far his policies have not matched his rhetoric. Despite the promises, government is too often not on the side of working parents. And so there is an opportunity for progressives in both parties to get behind a pro-family and pro-business initiative that would give working parents the simple right to ask for a more family-friendly schedule. It doesn't require employers to grant the request, but it does tell parents that it is okay to stand up for their own interests. For many workers who have been conditioned to do as they are told on the job, that is a radical new shift.

A new flexibility presumption would give working parents many more ways to juggle their responsibilities and would hand them control over their lives. And it could be expanded to all caregivers -- in addition to working parents, more than 22 million working Americans provide care to another adult. There is hardly a constituency that isn't affected by the struggle to balance work and family responsibilities. We haven't yet landed on the right solution, but if we enlist the help of employees themselves, we just might get there.

Karen Kornbluh is former director of the New America Foundation's Work and Family Program and now works for a Democratic senator. The views expressed here are purely her own.

Running Faster to Stay in Place

Workforce and Family — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Trying to make sense of the steady stream of economic news can be frustrating. Is the economy getting better or worse? The news seems to change weekly and, depending on what is measured, can seem bleak or sunny. Wages are stagnant but productivity is up. The unemployment rate declines but so does labor force participation.

We can't even begin to understand how America is faring economically unless we first establish how its families are doing -- how much they're earning and how many hours they must work to earn this income.

We have set out here to examine the number of hours worked by families and the link between wage growth and work hours in families of different incomes. In order to illuminate these trends, we present new data on the increase in hours worked by married-couple families and the contribution that wives’ income make to real income growth in these families. We put this recent period in the context of the post-War period and explore the implications of the data we present. Finally, we offer some directions for policy consideration.

The data we present here reveal that, for the period 1979-2000, married-couple families with children increased their hours worked by 16 percent, or almost 500 annual hours. Yet the data also demonstrate that without the increase in women’s work, middle-quintile families would have experienced an average real income increase of only 5 percent -- instead of the actual 24 percent -- while families in the bottom two quintiles would have experienced a decrease in real income over that period -- by about 14 percent for the bottom quintile and about 5 percent for the second quintile.

These data reveal that the economic engine for middle- and lower-income advancement is in low gear.

Remarkably, this is true even when productivity has grown at a healthy clip. These trends represent a departure from those of the post-War years when median family income doubled -- tracking productivity growth. Today, middle- and lower-income families no longer see increasing returns to their hours worked in the same way that the previous generation did. The only way many of these families can keep their total income growing -- or not shrinking -- is to work harder and harder.

For the complete document, please see the attached PDF version.

Win-Win Flexibility -- A Policy Proposal

Workforce and Family — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Today fully 70 percent of families with children are headed by two working parents or by an unmarried working parent. The "traditional family" of the breadwinner and homemaker has been replaced by the "juggler family," in which no one is home fulltime. Two-parent families are working 10 more hours a week than in 1979.

To be decent parents, caregivers, and members of their communities, workers now need greater flexibility than they once did. Yet good part-time or flex-time jobs remain rare....

For the complete document, please see the attached PDF version.

Rethinking Domestic Policy

Communications — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 03:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
02/07/2005 - 12:02pm

Summary of Remarks

The second panel of the Real State of the Union, "Rethinking Domestic Policy" was moderated by Morton Mondracke, executive editor of Roll Call. The discussion focused on fundamental problems at the core of American domestic policy, including asset management, health care, and improving standards for all Americans.

Ray Boshara, Director of New America's Asset Building Program, led off the discussion by focusing on the "ownership society." Mr. Boshara defined the current economic social status in the United States as… more

Tackling Taxes

Communications — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/30/2004 - 12:11pm

Tax reform is one of the Administration's top agenda items, but little is known about what their tax proposal will look like. What should the goals of tax reform be? How do we determine the winners and losers? Can fairness and inefficiency be balanced? How likely is it that tax reform will pass?

The New America Foundation's Fiscal Policy and Work & Family Programs brought together a panel of experts with varying perspectives to discuss the goals, prospects for and effects… more

Leaving Women Behind

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0400

President George W. Bush has framed his domestic agenda in recent speeches as a response to women's economic security concerns. In fact, in the president's "Ownership Society," women would be less -- not more -- economically secure.

The president's nomination acceptance speech contained a direct appeal to working moms. He offered women a post-"era-of-big-government-is-dead" message about putting government on the side of families: "The times in which we live and work are changing dramatically...Today, workers change jobs, even careers, many times during their lives, and in one of the most dramatic shifts our society has seen, two-thirds of all moms also work outside the home...This changed world can be a time of great opportunity for all Americans to earn a better living, support your family, and have a rewarding career. And government must take your side."

It's smart politics to offer help for struggling families. Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced himself to California voters by championing an after-school initiative before he ran for governor. President Bill Clinton campaigned on the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1992. It was the first bill he signed and he mentioned it in every State of the Union Address. President Clinton won among married women in both 1992 and 1996. Sen. Kerry's focus on policies to help struggling middle class families pay for childcare, college and health insurance helped him earn high marks on the economy earlier in the election.

Americans today find themselves struggling to give their kids a shot at the American Dream. They compete with workers around the world for wages and benefits, switching jobs every five years and -- in one out of four cases -- work in nonstandard (temp, contingent, freelance) jobs. As a result, they must work longer and longer hours just to make ends meet. We refer to these new workers as "global free agents" and their families, in which both parents work, as "juggler families." Both lack protection from programs (designed in the New Deal era) that rely on large employers to deliver benefits.

Women pay the greatest price for our outdated social contract. They can no longer depend on a lifelong mate to provide economic security, and when they enter the job market themselves, their family responsibilities close many doors. They have less job security, lower wages and fewer benefits. Women constitute a full two-thirds of those who lost health insurance coverage this year.

But what the president offers women is bait-and-switch politics. His Ownership Society proposals would make women far less economically secure than they are today by eliminating -- instead of reforming -- the risk-sharing mechanisms of our social contract programs. The agenda includes privatizing Social Security; replacing the current health care system with tax shelters; offering additional tax shelters to replace or augment private pensions and undermining the 40-hour workweek. These proposals would leave Americans "owning" more of their own economic insecurity.

Take just one piece -- arguably the cornerstone -- of the president's Ownership Society agenda: his health care plan. Women are less likely than men to have employer-sponsored health insurance, yet the president's proposal includes no increased access for those who do not get insurance through their employers -- other than a meager inducement to individuals to purchase a policy on the private market. But these tax credits are far too small to make coverage affordable, and would actually buy less coverage for women than for men. Women's premiums and deductibles are typically higher than men's due to their need for services such as maternity care. His only mechanism for controlling costs is to hope that individuals will exert control over insurance companies and the medical profession when they have to pay health expenses out of their own pockets. As a result, under the president's plan, the cost of employer-sponsored coverage will continue to climb. More people will find themselves without employer-sponsored insurance coverage. And those individuals without such coverage will continue to have nowhere to go.

The right response to the changing family and economy is not to ask families to own more of the risk inherent in the global economy, as the Ownership agenda proposes to do. Instead of undermining the social contract, we should redesign it so it can once again offer families the tools to share risk and prosper in a global economy. Reforms should include citizen-based health insurance, subsidized by income; progressive retirement accounts; new refundable, tax-subsidized accounts to help parents save for the expenses of having a family; universal pre-K and after-school programs; and childcare subsidies and workplaces that do not penalize parents who need flexibility to care for kids.

Women may appreciate that a conservative president, in a Nixon-goes-to-China gesture, has demonstrated he understands the concerns of working mothers. But they need more than recognition. They need real reforms to outdated social contract programs giving them the tools to share risk and prosper in a global economy.

America's Promise in A New Century

adminn — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400

FROM: Karen Kornbluh
SUBJECT: America's Promise in A New Century
DATE: August 6, 2004

Americans are concerned as they have not been since 1992 about the future of their way of life in a global economy. They sense that their kids may be part of the first generation that does worse than its parents and they don't understand how this can be so when they are "working hard and playing by the rules."

President Bush has embraced the framework popularized by New America to explain changes in both the economy and the family. The diagnosis is right but, unfortunately, the prescription -- the Ownership Society agenda -- would make the patient worse. It would help only the dwindling number of those thriving in a global economy and increase economic insecurity for most families:

These are exciting times for our country. It's a time of amazing change. The economy is changing. The world is changing. In our parents' generation, moms usually stayed home while fathers worked for one company until retirement. The company provided health care, and training, and a pension. Many of the government programs and most basic systems, from health care to Social Security to the tax code were based, and still are based on those old assumptions.

This is a different world. Workers change jobs and careers frequently. Most of these jobs are created by small businesses. They can't afford to provide health care or pensions or training. Parents are working; they're not at home. We need to make sure government changes with the times, and to work for America's working families. You see, American workers need to own their own health care accounts. They need to own and manage their own pensions and retirement systems. They need more ownership so they can take the benefits from job to job. They need flex-time so they can work out of the home.

The right response to the changing family and economy is not to undermine the social contract further by asking families to "own" more of the risk inherent in the global economy, as the Ownership agenda proposes to do. Nor is it to appear to be patching the outdated social contract. It is to reform the social contract so it works to make families economically secure in the 21st Century economy.

The Narrative: Renewing America's Promise in A New Century

Over the last three decades, American workers became "global free agents," competing with workers around the world for wages and benefits, changing jobs every five years on average and, in one out of four cases, working in nonstandard (temp, part-time, free lance) jobs. So, earnings stagnated and health insurance and pension benefits shrank. At the same time, the costs of middle class life rose.

The result has been parents working more and more hours to pay the bills. The new "juggler parents" are stretched for time to care for kids and participate in community activities. A forthcoming Economic Policy Institute-New America paper reports that middle-class family income would have virtually held steady over the last 25 years if these families had not increased the number of hours they worked dramatically, in a radical departure from post-war trends. Families in the bottom two income quintiles would actually have fallen.

Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley explained in a recent NY Times op ed that global "wage arbitrage" is finally upon us and we must act. He is only half right. We face global wage and safety net arbitrage. Alan Greenspan sees clouds on the horizon. He testified in June that the jobs problem "can be and must be addressed, because I think that it's creating an increasing concentration of incomes in this country and, for a democratic society, that is not a very desirable thing to allow to happen."

A poll conducted by pollsters Bill McInturff and Anna Greenberg for the New America Foundation found likely voters feel kids aren't being properly cared because parents are working harder to make ends meet.

Americans are eager to embrace the many advantages -- flexibility, autonomy and potential for upside -- of the new century. However, antiquated policies undermine their ability to succeed. The goals of our education, social insurance and workplace policies, created to give our grandparents the tools to build economic security and opportunity, are as critical as ever. The policies should not be abandoned. They must be reformed for the new era.

The candidate who convinces them he understands their plight and is best able to lead them into a brighter future has a great advantage. In 1992, Bill Clinton put forward a comprehensive agenda to create high paying jobs in a global economy. Married women voted for Clinton in 1992. In 1996 he won the support of married women and men. Arnold Schwartzenegger used the struggles of working families to introduce himself to the voters of California. He proposed an after-school initiative to address the problem of latch-key kids.

The New Agenda for America's Families

Reforms are needed to restore America's promise and address the global wage and safety net arbitrage. The New Agenda would include a number of signature New America Foundation proposals as well as new ideas for redesigning the safety net for the 21st Century.

Redesigning the Safety Net

Citizen-based Health Insurance, subsidized so that no one pays more than a fixed percentage of income.
Progressive Retirement (USA) Accounts.
International forum on safeguarding the middle class in developed countries and growing the middle class in developing countries.
Parent Accounts. Tax-preferred, refundable accounts for parents to save for the costs of raising children OR adopt the Clark tax reform proposal to combine the various child tax credits.
Work-Life. Expand FMLA, work with business to create more flexible workplaces by creating a new award and work with small businesses on adopting best practices.

Growing Wages

Learning Society. Put new science and math teachers in our schools. Devise a blueprint for a New Learning Network of the highest quality learning, appropriate to the needs of local employment opportunities, in every community.
National Economic Opportunity Council (combining NEC and OSTP) focused on creating quality jobs in a global economy through innovation, investment and infrastructure.
Entrepreneurial Capitalism Bank. Replace SBA with a new bank to spur small business creation and innovation out of the disparate small business funding programs.

Economic Opportunity and Values

Communications — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 12:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
07/15/2004 - 12:00pm

The recent political discussion of the "middle class squeeze" has emphasized themes of both economic opportunity and values. This event delved more deeply in the policies that address the stresses on modern families, as New America's Work & Family Program presented its third event in a series entitled "The Stresses on 21st Century Families."

This event series provided a venue for discussing the current state of American families, including their need for increased workplace flexibility to balance work and family commitments… more

Why Dad Can't 'Have it All'

Workforce and Family — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Father’s Day holds few surprises. A gift from the kids-usually a bad tie-and dinner with the family. Fatherhood itself, however, has undergone dramatic changes over the past few decades as Dads have taken on far more responsibility at home and, in many ways, changed the very definition of Father. The rest of the world has yet to catch up with the new Dad. As a result, even in 2004, too many fathers must still choose between being good breadwinners and good parents -- when they’d like to be both.

In 1960, Dads in 70 percent of all families with children could kiss the kids good-bye and leave for work knowing that Mom was home to answer any calls from the school nurse. Today, Dad’s work number is likely to be on the school emergency card -- as there’s no one home full-time in over 70 percent of all families. As working mothers have increased the number of hours they work -- by over 1/3, over the last two decades, according to the Economic Policy Institute -- Dad has been under ever more pressure to pick up the slack.

Dads have responded -- increasing the time they spend doing household chores by almost 45 minutes a day (while mothers have decreased their time by about the same amount), and spending twice as much time devoted to child care responsibilities as they did thirty years ago. The results tend to be positive. The more involved Dad is in family life, the better the kids. cognitive development, self control, self esteem, life skills and social competence -- and the less stereotyped attitudes they have about appropriate roles for men and women.

Michael Kimmel, a leading scholar of fatherhood, believes .the most dramatic shift in family life in the 21st century will surely be the changing roles of men, just as the demographic shift in the workplace in the 20th century was the dramatic entry of women..

But while dads seem willing to expand their role in family life, there’s a third party that has not been so quick to change: the workplace. Dad may want to spend more time with the kids, but his boss isn’t too eager to give him the flexibility he needs. Fathers are now working slightly more than they did in 1979. And the pressure on them to do all that is asked of them at work is on the rise. Offshoring is just one of the threats to a family’s economic security. Job tenure and benefit coverage are down. Wages have stagnated while fixed costs like housing and college are through the roof.

Dads can’t risk losing the family’s health care and pension benefits that are often tied to working a .full-time. schedule. Meanwhile, full-time jobs often lack access to parental leave or flexible work arrangements that would help them balance work and family. More than half of wage and salaried employees lack the ability to change their starting and quitting times, and a similar percentage lack the ability to work a compressed schedule. In fact,

Dads often face hostility by their employer for taking time off to meet the needs of children and family. In a study released this week by the Program on WorkLife Law at American University Washington College of Law, fathers were found to risk pay loss, disciplinary action, and even dismissal when they choose family responsibilities over work.

For dads, like moms, cash competes with care. Much has been written in the last few years about the financial sacrifice this often entails for Mom -- especially in the event of a divorce. But less has been said about the price that Dad and the kids pay when a demanding boss, or fear of a pink slip, trumps Dad’s ability to attend to a sick child or show up for a parent conference.

It is simply a myth that dads wouldn’t choose to .have it all. if given the option. A study by the Families and Work Institute shows that 70 percent of fathers reported feeling that they do not have enough time with their children. And when two federal agencies implemented flextime for their employees, half of the male employees with children changed their work hours in order to spend more time with their families.

Institutions need to change if men are to be allowed to succeed as fathers, both at work and at home. For a start, employers need to understand that their workforce has more family responsibilities than in the past and needs more flexibility. Family economic security -- in the form of health insurance and pension benefits -- can no longer be tied to working long hours. More supports -- like child care and after after school -- are required to help care for children while dads and moms are at work.

It’s not too late to return the tie.

This document is also available in PDF format.

It's The Family Budget... And Values, Stupid

Workforce and Family — Wed, 16 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Today, Senator John Kerry announced new after-school and child care tax credit initiatives. His speech is part of a renewed focus on easing the "middle class squeeze." Yesterday, Senator Edward Kennedy and Representative Rosa DeLauro introduced a bill guaranteeing employees paid time off for their own or a family member's illness.

The emphasis on families and the pressures on them is exactly right. American families are experiencing a "family budget shock" as a result of three reinforcing trends: stagnating incomes, increasing fixed costs and declining benefit coverage. These reform proposals directly address the family's bottom line and the level of care they can provide their kids.

Public officials and politicians who offer solutions that help the family budget demonstrate they "get" how the economy affects real families. Arnold Schwartzenegger saw this. He championed an after-school initiative before running for Governor. President Bill Clinton campaigned on the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1992 and made sure it was the first bill he signed. He mentioned it in every State of the Union Address. This year, both President Bush and Senator Kerry have proposed making permanent marriage penalty relief and expansion of the child tax credit.

For the full version of this document, please see the attached PDF file.