On June 21, the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Workforce Protections held a hearing on “Balancing Work and Family: What Policies Best Support American Families?”
Chair Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) said, “Today, in about 80 percent of families with two parents, both parents work. And 75 percent of all mothers single and married are in the workplace today.” Rep Woolsey continued, “As a result, balancing work and family has become a real challenge. This is made all the more difficult because of the lack of ‘family-friendly’ policies in this country. And by ‘family-friendly’ I am talking about paid sick leave and family and medical leave, affordable child care, and flexible schedules to name a few. To appreciate the uphill battle faced by working families, listen to some of these statistics…Only 28 percent of full-time workers have flexible schedules that allow them to vary the time that they begin and end work. And one-half of private sector employees in this country do not have a single day of paid sick leave.” She added, “It is shame, too, because studies have told us that ‘family-friendly’ policies work. They increase recruitment and retention rates, decrease absenteeism, and improve productivity.”
Ranking Member Joe Wilson (R-SC) stated, “This issue of work-family balance is one confronting most workers. The reality of today’s workforce is that many workers feel pressed for time: time for themselves to further their education or improve their job-related skills, take up a hobby or volunteer; others need more time to be with their children and be involved in their children’s school activities; while others need time to care for a sick or elderly relative.” Rep. Wilson added, “In today’s competitive economy, companies who want to attract and retain valuable employees recognize that progressive family-friendly policies and flexible work arrangements are an important tool. In return for increased flexibility, employees are more productive and committed to their work.” He concluded his remarks by saying, “The question is then, what can we do to encourage and facilitate a work environment that is family-friendly and flexible?…A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to mandating certain benefits of leave programs could have effect of stifling or otherwise limiting innovative methods of helping workers better balance work and family responsibilities.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) opened the first panel by focusing her remarks on paid sick leave and her bill, the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 1542): “There is no simple answer when it comes to strengthening our working and middle-class families. But there are a number of critical steps we can take initiatives that have proven successful at making opportunity real for families and children. And that is why legislation like the Healthy Families Act is so important. Paid sick days are a basic right for people in the workplace. More than half of the workforce already has the right to take time off when they are sick, or when they need to stay home to care for a sick child or elderly relative.” Rep. DeLauro continued, “Working women and their families, in particular, would benefit from our bill. We all know that the brunt of the responsibility for caring for children still falls upon women that is the way it is. Half of all working mothers report that they must miss work when a child is sick and half of them do not get paid. When nearly a third of all working mothers fear their job evaluation might suffer from missing work, imagine what this legislation could mean to them: peace of mind…Of course, while paid sick days will make a tremendous difference, it is not silver bullet. We must embrace a comprehensive pro-family agenda.”
“The American workplace has undergone a dramatic change in composition, character, and demands,” said Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL). She continued, “What was previously a static, agriculture and manufacturing-based economy with a mostly male workforce has evolved into a fast-paced, global services, and high technology environment with nearly equal numbers of women and men in the workforce.” Rep. Biggert discussed the need to update the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) (P.L. 75-718), saying, “Providing working men and women with more control over their work schedules should be a ‘no brainer.’ Unfortunately, private sector employees and employers alike are constrained by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act…I think it’s fair to say that the FLSA does not permit a great deal of flexibility, because it was designed for a different workforce with different needs. This subcommittee previously held a number of hearings on the FLSA. Out of those hearings came a number of proposals, perhaps the most significant of which was the ‘Family Time Flexibility Act,’ or the so-called ‘comp time’ bill. The concept behind the bill was simple: it was designed to help working men and women better manage work and family pressures by providing them with increased flexibility to spend quality time with their families. The bill proposed a common-sense solution: to allow private sector employees a choice that their colleagues working in federal, state, and local governments have had for many years. That choice is the option of cash wages or paid time-and-a-half off as compensation for working overtime hours…Employees could then decide, based on their need and that of their families, whether to choose paid time off or extra pay for working overtime.”
The second panel began with Missy Quarberg of Wisconsin, who expressed her concern with the policies of her former employer. Ms. Quarberg said, “Wal-Mart has a policy called ‘opening availability scheduling,’ which means that you have to work changing schedules whenever Wal-Mart wants it. It also has a restrictive attendance policy, which penalizes you if you need to take a day off from work for medical, family, or other reasons. After you have taken three days off when you were scheduled to work, you run the risk of losing your job.” Ms. Quarberg detailed her personal experience: “One time my daughter had a cavity and I gave my supervisor more than three days notice that I need a couple of hours to take her to the dentist. While at the dentist, it was discovered that my daughter needed an emergency root canal. My daughter, who is very young, was not feeling well afterward so I had to call into my work to tell them I was taking the entire day off. When I got back to work, my supervisor scolded me for not giving her enough advanced notice, and I was penalized under Wal-Mart’s attendance policy. My supervisor told me that in the future, I needed to plan these things more in advance. How could I possibly plan my children’s sudden health problems in advance?”
“Our employees tend to be ambitious and career oriented. They want to develop professionally and build a career, but they also have lives as parents, sons or daughters, and spouses so at KPMG we are promoting a culture of flexibility to help them manage the complexities of work and life,” said Barbara Wankoff, director of Workplace Solutions at KPMG, who detailed a number of family-friendly policies in place for KPMG employees. She continued, “We recognize the critical need for new mothers to bond with their children, so we allow them to take up to 26 weeks of leave, going beyond FMLA [the Family and Medical Leave Act (P.L. 103-3)], while guaranteeing that their job will be waiting when they return. And this applies to births, adoptions, or foster care placement. And by paying women 100 percent of their salary for up to eight weeks, as well as additional weeks at two-thirds pay, we are making it easier for women to take the time off that they want. New fathers also receive two weeks paid parental leave. We try to ease the transition for new mothers coming back to work by providing privacy rooms for breastfeeding and allowing them to phase in their return to work instead of jumping back in fulltime.” Ms. Wankoff went on to say, “To further support working parents at KPMG, we contract with third-party providers to offer free back-up child care for the inevitable emergencies when the sitter is sick or bad weather closes the daycare center. It’s tremendous relief for parents to know they have access to safe, reliable back-up care in these situations and can meet both their work and family obligations.”
Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner of Moms Rising said, “Our country’s lack of family-friendly policies also drags down mother’s wages. While women without children make 90 cents to a man’s dollar, women with children make only 73 cents to a man’s dollar, and single mothers, about 60 cents to a man’s dollar. Countries with family-friendly policies and programs in place like paid family leave and subsidized child care don’t have wage gaps as wide as we do here. And we are, frankly, behind the rest of the world when it comes to family-friendly policies.” Ms. Rowe-Finkbeiner continued, “For example, of the 173 countries that were the subject of a study of international workplace policies by Dr. Jody Heymann of Harvard and McGill Universities, there were only four countries that didn’t provide some form of paid family leave for new mothers. The four countries that did not and do not have some form of paid leave for new mothers are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Liberia, and the United States. In fact, we lack many family-friendly programs that citizens of most other industrialized countries take as a given. Programs like universal health care coverage, paid family leave, and a minimum number of paid sick days. Of the 20 most competitive economies in the world, the U.S. is the only one that does not require businesses to provide paid sick days.”
Melissa Lindsay of Baltimore, Maryland also testified.
