3.2 - Companies Taking The Lead

For all practical purposes, the Johnson Moving and Storage office, located just outside of Denver, Colorado, looks just like any typical American office. Florescent ceiling lights illuminate rows of cubicles, and the muted sounds of people working fill the air. But the real center of this particular office, one of nine Johnson Moving and Storage offices in nine cities that span six states, can be found by walking down an 80-foot corridor lined with often-empty cubicles. At the end of this long hall is a doorway.

The door opens to a small room abuzz with the hum of small fans cooling racks of computers and high powered servers. The darkness is broken by the blinking of LEDs. This temperaturecontrolled room is a hub for the 107-year-old company, housing the main phone system that can be accessed via the internet from any location, all of the digitized files (and all files are digitized), and any other information an employee would need to work anytime from anywhere.

And they do mean anywhere. One off-site bookkeeping employee works in Pakistan. He moved because his wife missed her home country, but kept his job. In fact, this particular employee now enjoys the added bonus of being in a different time zone, so he can work through our night/his day to meet deadlines. In fact, a full 25 percent of all the nearly 100 Johnson Moving and Storage employees, including contract workers, are off-site or virtual workers (17.1 percent of in-house staff work off-site). Many also work flexible hours to fit their family or personal schedules.

Owner Jim Johnson, a self-described conservative, made the leap to cutting-edge workplace policies in the late nineties after hearing Joan Williams, author of Unbending Gender, speak at a Harvard Divinity Club function held in the parlor of a private turn-of-the-century home in Denver. "My wife saw Joan Williams' presentation in the morning and she wanted me to go in the afternoon. We have twin girls, and my wife's an attorney. At the time she was really struggling with being an excellent attorney and an excellent parent." Johnson went to the presentation and was changed.

"One of the things that struck me with Joan Williams' presentation was that the order of traditional society--which was God, family, then work--had been flipped in later industrial cultures and it just didn't work. It struck me as being a truthful statement," recalls Johnson. He comments that, "A lot of these issues are infused with political overtones and it was so refreshing to have it told in a rational way. It made a lot of sense to recreate the workplace in a better way."

Johnson was also drawn in by the business possibilities in what then was a very tight employment market. So he decided to give it a try.

He first spoke with the vice president in charge of administrative staff, and asked her what she thought of offering some of the employees the option to work either fully or part-time at home. She was excited, and after talking with other staff, she returned to tell Johnson the response was overwhelmingly positive.

Johnson Moving and Storage executives then got to work defining individual jobs according to goals rather than just by hours worked and the location where the job was done. This approach is being used with increasing frequency. A July 2005 Time magazine article highlights this trend by focusing on the recent changes made at Best Buy, which is shifting its business culture to a results-oriented work environment (ROWE) in much the same way as Johnson Moving and Storage.¹⁴

After experimenting with ROWE, Best Buy had interesting early results. The Time magazine article reports that Best Buy analyzed a fairly small sample of three hundred employees and found that after implementing ROWE, "Turnover in the first three months of employment fell from 14 percent to zero, job satisfaction rose 10 percent, and their team performance scores rose 13 percent." There is a slow transition at Best Buy to this new working model. Different teams opt into the ROWE program as it makes sense for them.

One important factor is that the Best Buy employees opt in as teams, so there isn't prejudice against individual employees using the new working model.¹⁵ This is important to note because many employees using flextime report hostility from other non-flextime employees. This hostility can hamper the career path of people using flexible work options. In fact, a study in the Harvard Business Report notes, "Of flexible work arrangements in general, 21 percent report that 'there is an unspoken rule at my workplace that people who use those options will not be promoted.' "¹⁶ The fact that Best Buy is getting rid of the stigma of flexible work options may be one of the reasons their shift to the new working model is successful. It's going so well that in the Minneapolis Best Buy headquarters, about half of the 3,500 employees are now part of the program, with the percentage expected to increase over time.¹⁷

Johnson explains how they made the shift in his moving and storage company, "We detached what needed to be done from the hours needed to do it. We weren't trying to get 60 hours of work for 40 hours of pay, but we said as long as we don't get any complaints [from customers] we really don't care when you do your work; and as long as you respond in an appropriate manner, we don't care what part of your day is available."

This policy necessarily applied to jobs that were fairly independent from the constructs of time and space--primarily accounting and administrative functions where immediate answers weren't needed, and a home office environment was often more productive than a cubicle (and a cost-saving measure for the company in terms of overhead). Other employees couldn't take advantage of this type of flextime policy because they need to be available at distinct times. For example, the movers and staff that coordinate between the dispatch crew and customers need to be available during set hours in order for the business to operate efficiently. Even some move coordinators, however, work at home during set hours.

The policy changes brought glowing reports from employees, some writing to Johnson to tell him about their experience:

--"For me, in my over 19 years at Johnson's, this work-at-home phase has been the most rewarding."

--"Working from home allows me to arrange my work hours with a twenty-four-hour window, rather than an eight-hour window. This work set-up allows me to be a mom first, still accomplish my responsibilities to my employer, and pull in a paycheck."

--One single father notes that he saves the cost of gas from commuting to work, and comments, "I can take my daughter to school and pick her up. . . . The option to work at home is truly appreciated."

--"If my kids are sick I can be at home and still work," comments one mother. She also adds, "Thank you for giving me the ability to be a good mom and wife, and still have a career."

--"I can concentrate on tasks I'm doing. There aren't any more interruptions from other employees in regards to personal problems or other work related problems."

--"I'm able to complete my tasks and feel more productive."

--"In 2003, my husband suffered a fall and broke his ankle. I was able to be home and close to him."

--"The money I saved in daycare alone was hundreds of dollars per month. I was seriously injured this year, and in a wheelchair for five months. Had I not been able to work from home, I wouldn't have been able to work at all."

The flexible work options weren't just helping the employees; Johnson found that his company also experienced benefits. First, like at Best Buy, the employee turnover dropped significantly, falling to half that of the regular office staff without flextime. "You can see why," Johnson comments, "because as life changes, those occurrences don't prompt a resignation."

Another business benefit is that Johnson can now hire better qualified people who would otherwise need to be paid more for their positions than he is able to afford. Those people are willing to trade lower salaries for working at home since they don't have added costs related to working outside of the home, such as paying for gas and daycare. "I suspect I'd have more wage pressure from employees without the work-at-home option." He also finds he gets a higher caliber of people applying for positions with flextime options, noting, "That talent would be out of the job market without the work-at-home option."

All in all, Johnson notes, "We're definitely getting higher quality employees because of the work-at-home program. I have a competitive advantage because apparently not many other employers are replicating this type of work, so our general talent pool selection is better."

Studies show that Johnson isn't the only businessperson that has found flextime options can be beneficial to both the employer and employee. A Families and Work Institute report, The 2005 National Study of Employers, found that half (47 percent) of the companies that offer work life initiatives including flexible work schedules, family leave, and childcare, do so not because they want to altruistically support employees, but because it makes better business sense given efforts to recruit and retain employees, and many businesses (25 percent) reported they do so to increase the productivity and job commitment of employees.¹⁸

Quite interestingly, that same study found that small companies, those with fifty to ninety-nine employees, are the most likely to allow workplace flexibility options.¹⁹ Not all flextime options are as loose as the models used by Johnson Moving and Storage and Best Buy. As previously noted, flexible work options differ according to workplace needs.

Successful budget airline Jet Blue takes a more structured approach to flextime, allowing its airline reservation representatives to work split shifts from home offices.

Susan, a mother of three young boys from eight to thirteen years old, is one such employee. As you walk in the front door of Susan's house, there aren't any clues that the home office behind the closed door in the hallway is actually a satellite to Jet Blue's corporate headquarters. The cozy colonial decor brings warmth to this house of five people. A focal point for family gatherings is the dark cherry dining room table with claw feet and matching high back chairs that were all brought to this Utah town by covered wagon from the east coast three generations ago. This table certainly doesn't look like it belongs in a break area for an airline satellite office, but in this case it does.

Susan takes Jet Blue reservations from her home office, working between fifteen and twenty-four hours each week and choosing her own daily shifts. There are about 1,200 people holding similar jobs for Jet Blue, which handles all reservations via people working from home, and offers a wide variety of set shifts and schedules. Their compensation includes an hourly pay rate that generally starts under ten dollars an hour, profit sharing, and free flight benefits.

These jobs are very popular--many in the Salt Lake City community hear about them by word of mouth. When the company puts out a call for new applicants three or four times each year, they regularly get over 1,000 applicants in the first 48 hours after posting the jobs.

Susan's current schedule is planned around the times her children are in school and the times her husband can be at home watching the kids. "I have a schedule of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I work from 11 A.M. until 2 P.M. and then from 6 P.M. until 9 P.M. on those same days. So it's a split shift three days a week," she explains.

"I was working outside of home before Jet Blue, and it was very disruptive, getting up early and getting everyone ready and taking them somewhere." She adds that working from home is much better.

Her home office is set up for efficiency. When she was hired, Jet Blue came in and installed a dedicated computer and phone. She starts each shift by turning on her Jet Blue computer and signing into their phone system (she also has her own personal computer in her office). "We have a separate line for home and we have two lines for Jet Blue--one is for calls coming in and the other is for outgoing support calls in case I have questions during reservations."

The reservation calls come in constantly while she's on her shift. The minute she hangs up with one call another one rings in. She handles these calls with ease, and enjoys her exchanges with the customers, "I do have fun talking with people. There are some difficult ones, but for the most part people are nice and happy to be planning a trip.

"Now you know why we're the only airline that's not in bankruptcy. We treat our customers really well, we're happy to be working for a really great company, and it's great to be able to work at home. It works out really well for all of us: For the company because the customer is happy and the employee is happy," she concludes.

From the business side, Steve Mayne, Jet Blue's operations manager concurs, "As a company we are very, very satisfied and happy with the way this has panned out for us." He continues, and shares the company philosophy, "We feel that if we have very satisfied employees working from home, then that satisfaction will transfer to the customer who will also enjoy doing business with Jet Blue and tell others which will also bring in repeat business." He concludes, "It's absolutely working."

As we move into a Digital Age, those companies that use flexible work options often have more effective workplaces.²⁰ In fact, the Families and Work Institute includes flexible workplaces as one of the six criteria for creating an effective workplace, and notes that their own research "consistently reveals that flexibility is linked to engagement, retention, job satisfaction, and employee well-being."²¹ Increased access to flexible work options can benefit both the employer and employee.

After seeing the benefits of flexible work arrangements, many countries have passed national legislation to make that option more widely available. Great Britain, for example, passed national legislation in 2003 that gives parents of children under the age of six the right to request flexible work. This law sets a process for the request: An employee makes a written request to their employer; a discussion is held between the two, then the employer grants or denies the request. The employee is given an appeal process if they don't agree with the answer. The employer was given several broad grounds to legally deny the flexibility request, including if the arrangement will cost the business money or otherwise hurt their ability to conduct commerce.²²

As of 2005, this type of legislation hasn't passed in the United States. Shelley Waters Boots, acting director of the Work and Family Program at the New America Foundation, notes that some members of Congress are considering proposing flexible work legislation. Putting this type of legislation forward is an important step to increase public and legislator awareness about the need for, and possibilities of, such legislation.

"Families, and especially parents, really need to stand up and say flexible work options are an important part of being both a good parent and a good worker," notes Waters Boots. "It shouldn't be an either/or decision, as in either time or families. We need to figure out how, as a country, we can allow people to be good at both roles."

Some parents and employees are getting active and requesting flexible work arrangements here in the United States (although flexible work options aren't yet widely available).²³ Judy David Bloomfield, director of One Small Step, points out that right now, "Most flexible work arrangements are negotiated between the employee and the boss. Flexible work arrangements have become more prevalent because there is a groundswell with employees. But it still takes individuals to take the initiative to make these things happen. The flip side is that it takes managers willing to work it out. We've still got a long way to go. There is still a lot of manager resistance. But what I do see is that in companies that are doing these types of things, there is more and more sharing of success stories and those stories are being shared through the company."

By most accounts the biggest workplace impacts come when individuals--employees, managers, or business owners--take the initiative to create flexible work options in their workplaces. Often the flexible-work trailblazer opens up opportunities for co-workers to also make flexible working arrangements as businesses realize this type of work can help their bottom line. An essay written by Carol Ostrom in the book, Take Back Your Time,²⁴ shares how she and two co-workers finally got their management to agree to a flexible job-share arrangement where three people worked two jobs at a major newspaper.

Carol's first few requests for a job share position failed mainly because they were centered on herself and not on the workplace advantages. She writes, "I remember saying--quite eloquently, I imagined at the moment--how much I loved writing, loved journalism, but that other parts of my life were demanding attention, and they were parts I could no longer put 'on hold.' " This wasn't the best argument to management who were more concerned about an efficient workplace than Carol's home pressures, and promptly declined the request.

Carol didn't give up, finally realizing what she describes in her essay as "Lesson Number One: Getting a job share is not about you. It's never about you, no matter what your company says. It's about your company's needs." She writes, "We got our job share, finally, because newsroom managers wanted desperately to hire someone with specific skills for a particular position. The money wasn't in the budget, and managers didn't see any coming down the pike. But the job share, we noted repeatedly, after we finally caught the drift, would be a way to "gain" a position. . . . The point is that it might have gone a lot more smoothly for us if we'd figured out earlier that it wasn't about us."

The job share was successful. The three workers split the two jobs by months (four months working, and then two months off) to allow each of them to work on long-term projects, rather than a more traditional job-share that splits each workweek. And, they did blaze a trail for others in their workplace to also have flexible work arrangements, including one editor who, years earlier, was very hesitant about allowing this type of work arrangement and now holds a part-time job share position herself. Carol writes, "Sometimes we kid her now about her earlier opposition. She knows we understand."

3.3 - The Part Time Paradigm

The office windows were open, and a hot summer breeze carried the distant noise of traffic up five stories and into the Environmental Media Services West (now Resource Media) office. It was the weekly staff meeting that happened every Monday at 10 A.M. Liz, northwest director of the non-profit communications firm for environmental and public health issues, had important news to share with her staff of four—news that had been hard to keep secret in the close quarters of their workplace.

Their office was set up newsroom style: A big open room with desks lining the walls, and a sleek, but somewhat faded, conference table situated in the center. An enlarged, framed comic hangs on one wall. This comic spoke to the work generated from the room: Two cowboys were sitting around a campfire with an old fashioned coffee pot warming in the flames. One cowboy said to the other, “Hank, rustle me up some of that fairly traded, songbird-friendly organic breakfast blend yer brewin’.”

The comic was hung in honor of the songbird-friendly coffee campaign they’d been working on for the Seattle Audubon Society. Liz recalls the feeling of, “Ah, now that we’ve made it into the comics, we’ve really made it!” The women who worked in the office were all widely respected for effectively generating media for their clients.

Liz had something out of the ordinary to say at this particular staff meeting. She’d been holding back her news for weeks now. That something had her plotting out exactly where the bathroom was in every place she entered, carrying a plastic bag on the metro bus “just in case,” and brought her a new understanding of just how far the bathroom was from her office door (fifteen feet straight out and ten feet to the left).

Liz was twelve weeks pregnant, and had been battling morning, noon, and evening sickness for the past month.

“I was so sick, but I didn’t want to tell anyone for ten or twelve weeks until I knew the pregnancy was going to ‘stick,’ and I remember thinking, ‘How am I going to hide this?’ ” recalls Liz. She also remembers feeling an enormous amount of relief when she dropped her bombshell during that Monday morning staff meeting, “By the time I told everyone, I was so relieved that I could finally say why I looked like I just stepped off a seventeen hour plane trip from Singapore every morning.”

During those weeks of waiting to tell her staff, Liz did her homework on the home front. She visited several childcare facilities, had discussions with other mothers about how to really balance work and family (Several recommend that six months was the ideal time off because it gives time to bond with the baby, yet is before separation anxiety starts full force. Many emphasized, “Three months is too short, it’s just too short.”); and finally chose the childcare center she eventually wanted to use.

This decision caused a cascade of other linked decisions to follow. Signing up for childcare required getting on a waiting list for a start date on a specific month and year. This requirement made it necessary for Liz to think long and hard about what she wanted to do after her baby was born. So by the time she shared her news with co-workers, Liz already had her unborn child on a childcare waiting list, had decided to take six months off, and also was sure she wanted to work part-time when she came back.

“The precedent was already set in our office that new moms were getting their jobs back part-time if they wanted. Precedents are key because the first person to break the precedent has it the hardest, and I wasn’t the first,” she shares. The precedent was buoyed by the fact that the general situation was tipped in “new moms’ favor because it’s hard to find replacements for this type of work where established relationships with reporters are highly prized. So allowing people to work part-time is a way to retain the talent,” says Liz.

In the back of her mind, Liz knew that after having children she wanted a balanced work schedule that didn’t include five or more sunset to sundown days at the office each week. She comments, “Being part-time after Aaron was born was always in the cards.” In fact, studies show that Liz was onto something, professionals who work part-time are less likely to report work and family conflicts than those choosing a full-time position.²⁵ Unfortunately, part-time positions in this country usually come with a pay cut and few, if any, benefits.

Liz, however, had a different experience. When Liz returned from her six months home with the baby to work a part-time schedule of twenty-six hours per week, her hourly wage equivalency stayed the same as when she left at full-time. In stark contrast to Liz’s experience, people taking part-time jobs commonly receive lower pay than if they were working a similar job fulltime. A 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce notes this trend, finding that even co-workers notice part-timers get a raw deal: 61 percent of employees who work with a mixture of full- and part-time co-workers say, “part-timers receive less than pro rata pay and benefits compared with full-time employees in the same positions just because they work part-time.”²⁶

Liz is also faring well in another area that is a common pitfall with part-time positions: She has full medical and dental coverage in her part-time position (the same as when she was working full-time). This full coverage is quite unusual. The vast majority of part-time workers don’t have any healthcare coverage (81 percent).²⁷ Most other benefits that full-time workers receive—such as vacation leave, sick leave, pensions, and life insurance—are also often absent, even in a pro-rated manner, from part-time work packages.²⁸

In fact, the rising cost of healthcare is one of the big hurdles to increasing access to part-time work. Ellen Galinsky, President and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute, notes that in order for there to be more part-time work options, “As a country we have to solve the health issue. I don’t see solving the part-time issue without also addressing the issue of healthcare, but that said, when employers recognize that they get a lot more from part-time workers then that might change the way they think.”

Some companies actually “game” the system, purposefully using part-time labor so that they can avoid paying for benefits. For struggling families this may lead to parents having to work multiple part-time jobs in order to keep the telephone on, electricity running, and to pay medical bills. In this situation, there is little time to spare, not even for little family members. Quite obviously, this is not family-friendly part-time work.

Another common pitfall with part-time work is that employees often report being paid to work part-time, but then ending up working more hours per week than they are paid to do. One organization, the Center for WorkLife Law directed by Joan Williams, the same woman who inspired the owner of Johnson Moving and Storage, responded to this problem by working with employers and by sharing the benefits of familyfriendly policies, concentrating on one professional sector (attorneys). Through these efforts, the Center for WorkLife Law prompted changes in part-time work situations for lawyers with their Project for Attorney Retention (PAR) program.

The Center for WorkLife Law reports that “In Washington, D.C., where PAR began, law firms have virtually eliminated the ‘haircut’ (e.g. 60 percent salary for an 80 percent schedule). PAR has also been effective in discouraging the practice, formerly widespread in D.C., of taking part-timers off the partnership track, and has witnessed a marked increase in the number of male lawyers working part-time—a sure sign that part-time schedules are becoming less stigmatized.”²⁹ Many lawyers have used the PAR resources to institute similar changes in other parts of the country.

Part-time work options can benefit employers as well as employees. “Our research shows that if people are dual-focused, which means they prioritize work, as well as other things, then they are reenergized for work,” says Ellen Galinsky, President and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute. “People who work part-time often have more energy than others.”

Additional research backs up Galinsky’s assessment that part-time workers often excel in their positions: The authors of Beyond Work-Family Balance write, “Our research indicates that making this connection [between the ‘public sphere of paid work and the private sphere of personal life’], particularly at the level of work practices, can produce significant improvements in people’s lives and in workplace performance.”³⁰ And several real-world analysis of businesses as they institute flexible work policies, in particular at Deloitte and Dupont, have found that businesses benefit when they offer part-time and flexible work in a way that doesn’t bar career advancement because it significantly improves employee retention.³¹

Liz was able to keep the same pro-rated pay and benefits when she went back to work part-time, and the part-time attorneys in Washington, D.C., are in much better situations thanks to the Center for WorkLife Law efforts. Yet clearly, this is not the norm. In fact, equitably paid part-time work with any form of benefits is often very difficult to find, leaving this option open to few parents. In order to allow parents to work part-time so they can better balance work and family, not only do more part-time jobs need to be offered, but employers need to stop penalizing part-time workers and pay them the same hourly rate, including pro-rata benefits, as similar full-time jobs.

Some countries have already embraced making part-time work available to all who request it. The Netherlands, for example, which has the highest percentage of part-time workers (44 percent) of any country in the world,³² has passed laws to make sure part- and full-time workers are treated equally.³³

“We are in a transition between the twentieth century workplace with an industrial economy, and a twenty-first century workplace. The industrial economy required a one-size-fits-all workplace. In the transition we are in now, the nature of work, the economy, and the nature of the workforce are very different. In the past, part-time work was seen as a lesser kind of work, looking at the horizon we are going to think of new ways to work that work for both the employee and employer,” says Galinsky noting that increased access to flexible work options, including part-time work, is part of what’s on the horizon.

As Liz went back to work she found that she also had to make adjustments with her husband on the home front, since work done at home is part of the overall work equation. Early on, after spending her day at the office, Liz was up late one evening making her then eighteen-month-old son lunch for the next day as her husband relaxed on the couch in the living room with a book. “I was feeling a little bitter,” recalls Liz. “I said, ‘This work isn’t done yet, I need some help here, please get off the couch because I would like to be reading too.’ ” It was a breakthrough moment for her husband. “Something clicked in his brain. He realized it wasn’t a ‘Brian repairs things in the house and Liz does all the shopping, cleaning, and laundry’ situation; but that we both contribute what we can until all the work is done in a given night.”

Because of more equal treatment at home and a progressive and accommodating workplace, Liz has realized self-proclaimed “domestic bliss,” enjoying both of her jobs. “I’m totally satisfied with my work and home balance.”

Part-time work is an effective answer for many women who would find flexible full-time (or more) work like Dr. Stone’s too intensive. But while Liz is an example of what can go well with part-time work arrangements, it remains that the majority of part-time workers aren’t faring as well. In order to make parttime work a viable option for American workers with families, the following steps must be taken:

• Part-time workers should receive equitably pro-rated pay in relation to similar employees in full-time positions.
• Part-time positions need to be more widely available, as well as structured into a broad cross-section of jobs to alleviate tension between full- and part-time employees.
• Those who work part-time should not be held back from promotions.
• Part-time workers should be paid for all the hours they work and not be pushed to work past their scheduled hours without compensation.
• Part-time workers should receive some form of benefits.

With these changes, we can go a long way toward making part-time work equitably compensated and a viable reality for many American families.

3.4 - Sequencing

Martha was away from her home, yet again traveling on a business trip. Seven months pregnant with her second child, she was sitting in the waiting area of a small Horizon Airlines terminal in the Portland airport when she suddenly got a creepy feeling. She just had to know what her two-year-old son, at home with their nanny, was doing at that very moment. Martha’s son, like 10 percent of all children in childcare, was cared for at home by a nanny or babysitter.³⁴

While waiting for her airplane, “I had this really unsettling feeling, which wasn’t common for me,” recalls Martha. So she called her father who lived close to her home and asked him to drive by her house to see what was going on with her son and the nanny on “one of those surprise visits that you read about in parenting magazines.”

Her cell phone started ringing as Martha was walking across the tarmac to the rolling metal stairs that led into the airplane. It was her dad reporting back. After driving over to Martha’s house, he found her son playing in the caregiver’s parked car in the street while she was busy cleaning out her car. He wasn’t pleased with what he saw, and neither was Martha. Not a capital offense, but not exactly what Martha imagined as ideal for her son’s upbringing.

She made a huge decision right then about her next life steps as she talked on her cell phone while hovering under the airplane wing. The wind was whipping her hair into a tangled mess. “I felt like, ‘That’s it. I’m doing all this work to pay for my kid to play in a parked car in the street.’ I felt like there were so many better things for him to be doing. So that’s when I decided I needed to be more involved.”

She explains that her problem wasn’t so much about the caregiver, and notes that a lot of people wouldn’t have a problem with what the caregiver was doing, but it was more that, “I wanted to be making those choices,” she says, about what her son was doing each day.

So Martha quit her position as a vice president of a Fortune 500 company and decided to stay home for several years with her two children. Martha is one of many parents who are “sequencing,” moving in and out of the workplace to care for children.

For the first time in twenty-five years, a growing number of women are taking time out of the workforce when they have infants (babies under a year old). In fact, the proportion of mothers of infants in the workforce declined from a record high of 59 percent in 1998, to a lower 55 percent in 2000. This was the first significant decline since the U.S. Census Bureau began publishing this statistic in 1976.³⁵ The decline continued in 2002, when 54.6 percent of mothers with infants were in the workforce.³⁶

That said, 72 percent of all mothers with children over one year old were in the labor force.³⁷ What does this mean? It means that more women are leaving their jobs to stay home with babies for the first year of their child’s life, but that women aren’t opting out of work completely; they are going back to work when their children are older.

Having babies is a happy reality of life, and many parents savor the time spent away from work caring for a new baby. The problem with parents quitting their jobs to stay home with a newborn is that mothers, and families, suffer long-lasting financial consequences when they leave the workforce. Yet, without flexible work options, and without long-term paid family leave, quitting their jobs is the best option many parents have available to them. Ideally, work structures should be set up to allow parents to work around the ebb and flow of family needs and to also enjoy time with their children. But right now they’re not.

Because of this, many new mothers don’t have a real “choice” about whether or not to quit their jobs. If they didn’t have a high paying job to start or access to paid family leave, many women find the cost of infant childcare would eat their entire paycheck. For these mothers, taking time out of the workforce, or sequencing, may be the most practical option, particularly if a relative or some other person isn’t available to watch their infant for free while they work.

For many women, being a full-time parent isn’t an option because their paycheck is needed to support the family; and many families with a full-time parent at home are struggling. One clear indication of this is that families with a stay-at-home parent are seven times more likely to live in poverty than those with two working parents.³⁸ In fact, the birth of a child is too often a time of extreme financial challenge for American families, with a quarter of “poverty spells” starting with the birth of a baby.³⁹

Those wage hits, it turns out, persist for decades after returning to the workforce. The biggest decline in wages is seen during the first year back to work; though the wage gap does narrow the longer women are back in the workplace, more than two decades later these women still make far less than their counterparts who kept working without breaks.⁴⁰ One notable study published in the Monthly Labor Review, reports, “Women whose gaps [time out of the workplace] ended less than one year ago had wages that were 33 percent lower than those of women who did not leave the labor force. By the third year (when they would have returned to the work force more than three years ago) these women’s wages were only 20 percent lower than those of women who remained in the labor force.”⁴¹

Contrary to the authors of the study, we think “only” 20 percent lower wages after three years back in the labor force is an eye-catching and depressing statistic for all women. What’s more, the gap never completely disappears, regardless of the time back at work. The report continues, “Even women whose labor force gap occurred more than twenty years ago still earn between 5 and 7 percent less than women who never left the labor force and have comparable levels of experience.”⁴²

One of the biggest long-term costs of sequencing is women’s increased risk for having inadequate retirement income. Our retirement system is based on earnings, so full-time parents don’t accrue social security or other retirement benefits during their time at home. Retirement benefits also rarely transfer from job to job. In fact, women account for a disproportionate, and growing, percentage of the elderly poor. In 1983 women made up 71 percent of seniors living below the poverty line; in 1995 it was 75 percent.

It’s clear that despite the short- and long-term economic hits, more women are moving in and out of the labor force after the birth of a child. Some are sequencing quite successfully.

A pioneer in successful sequencing, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went back to paid work after fifteen years of juggling parenting and graduate school. She recalls an incident indicative of her life then. “I was working for U.S. Senator Muskie and my youngest daughter, Katie [then seven], called for me on the phone.” Katie was told, “ ‘I’m sorry, you can’t talk to your mom right now. She’s on the floor with Senator Muskie.’ ” Secretary Albright clearly relishes recounting the punch line, “When I got home my daughter said, ‘Mom, I know you have a new job, but what were you doing on the floor with Senator Muskie!?’ ” The floor, of course, was the voting area of the United States Senate. Not quite the picture her daughter had in mind.

Whether or not one agrees with Secretary Albright’s politics, there’s no question she’s a formidable woman. Secretary Albright served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations; as a member of President Clinton’s cabinet; as a staff member on the National Security Council; and most recently, was the first woman in the history of the U.S. government to achieve the high rank of U.S. secretary of state, fourth in line to the president.

She is also a former full-time mom who didn’t get started in her current professional career until she was thirty-nine.

“People find it hard to believe that I was home with my children. It wasn’t until I went into the Clinton administration that my chronological age and my professional age matched, because I had ‘taken time out,’ ” says Secretary Albright, discussing the time spent with her children.⁴⁵

Mothers like Secretary Albright show it’s possible to high jump over the “maternal wall.” But individual success stories don’t translate into widespread success for women. The maternal wall is holding strong. As this chapter reveals, studies show the majority of mothers suffer the long-term economic burdens of motherhood, which increase with employment breaks, for their entire lives.

One way many women deal with inflexible work environments when “sequencing” in and out of the workforce is to take working matters into their own hands. Many moms who quit work when they had children, later create their own flexible work arrangements when they sequence back into the workforce by starting their own businesses. In fact, women are starting businesses at more than double the rate of the general American public.⁴⁶

Martha, the mother under the airplane wing, is one such woman. After six years out of the labor force, she started her own public relations firm, noting, “I knew that when I went back to work it was going to have to wrap around my life and my family’s life. I really want to see my kids when they are young, so I knew I was going to have to create my own work environment because I didn’t see that possibility with my old employer—not to slam them, but it’s a current reality of a very large workplace. They have their business and they want to run it their way, but that doesn’t mean I have to run my business their way. I’m happy running mine my way—and I’m quite successful too.”

The reality is that a number of factors are going to have to come together to lessen the penalties on moms who take time out from paid work to care for children. First, the underlying causes that force some women to quit their jobs in order to stay home with infants need to be addressed. Providing support to new parents, as most other countries do, in the form of realistic paid family leave is a good start (the average industrial country guarantees significantly more weeks of leave than the U.S. does).⁴⁷ Second, allowing women (and men) flexible work options that let work wrap around family needs will go a long way toward helping parents, and businesses, in America succeed.

3.5 - Working It Out

Dr. Stone, Susan, Liz, and Martha are all doing well with both work and family. Their stories suggest the rich variety of possibilities that workers and workplaces are beginning to explore. An increasing number of businesses recognize the benefits of offering employees family-friendly work opportunities, yet it’s fair to say that the majority of workplaces have yet to adopt these practices. History has proven again and again that change is rarely easy.

Change upsets established power structures; it creates uncertainty, and makes those pushing for change from management positions particularly vulnerable if the gambit isn’t immediately successful. After all, very few managers get fired for following established company policy, while backing new directions ties supporters to the success or failure of those efforts. This is why it’s important to share the success stories of flexible work arrangements— these stories allow employers and employees to see the substantial potential benefits of implementing new policies without undertaking the risk of being the first to try a new venture. Managers, and business owners, can use the success stories to bolster their efforts. And, more efforts are certainly needed.

Right now, flexible work options are often limited to people holding jobs with higher education and pay. Karen Kornbluh notes this fact in a New America Foundation report, and elaborates, “Many businesses are finding ways to give their most valued employees flexibility but, all too often, workers who need flexibility find themselves shunted into part-time, temporary, oncall, or contract jobs with reduced wages and career opportunities— and, often, no benefits.”⁴⁸ In addition, “A full quarter of American workers are in these jobs. Only 15 percent of women and 12 percent of men in such jobs receive health insurance from their employers. “This is certainly not family-friendly.

So how do needed changes happen? Many of the success stories shared in this chapter came about because businesses or organizations determined it was in their best interest to create family-friendly work policies. Often the initial impetus for workplace change comes from an individual, or individuals who have a need, coupled with an open-minded manager who sees that the employee need is compatible with the business, or, even better, overlaps with a business opportunity.

For instance, the owner of Johnson Moving and Storage was motivated to make changes when he determined it was the right thing to do for families. He then investigated and developed options that wouldn’t hurt his business, and soon came to realize that those options allowed him to attract top employees as well as retain those already on board. In fact, offering family friendly work structures has a tendency to reinvigorate the old-fashioned mutual respect between employer and employee, resulting in greater job satisfaction for all involved.

The business community is starting to take note of the forthcoming workplace changes and the need for increased workplace flexibility to keep our economy healthy. A March 2005 Harvard Business Review article comments, “market and economic factors, both cyclical and structural, are aligned in ways guaranteed to make talent constraints and skills shortages huge issues again.” The article goes on to note, “There is a winning strategy. It revolves around the retention and reattachment of highly qualified women,” and later concludes, “To tap this all-important resource, companies must understand the complexities of women’s nonlinear careers and be prepared to support rather than punish those who take alternative routes.”⁴⁹

Flexible work options—including part-time jobs that pay a fair wage—allow working mothers to continue along demanding and challenging career paths, put food on the table, make vital contributions to our economy, and be good parents. Ultimately this is good for us all—our families and our businesses.

3.6 - Manifesto Point "O"

Mothers need flexibility at work so they can continue to work effectively while raising a family. And they need the ability to exit and enter the workforce without the huge pay cuts given to those considered on “the mommy track.”

ACTION: Mothers want—

1. Government incentives for flexible work options.
2. Fair wages and benefits for part-time positions.
3. Fair wages for mothers returning to the workforce.

Not Your Father's Union
by Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Chair Change to Win

It’s not just your father’s union anymore. In fact, it’s probably your mother’s, or sister’s, or daughter’s.

Women are a higher percentage of union members now than anytime in American history, making a difference in their lives and in our society as a whole.

Just as the work force and workplace changed, unions are changing too and so have their priorities. No longer is it just about wages and benefits—now it’s much broader, from childcare to comp time— helping women with the tools they need as they juggle work and family.

As a mother, and as a top officer of America’s fastest growing union, I see that the changes happening in the workplace are having a profound impact on women’s ability to balance work life and family life. And while union evolution has brought about several advancements, we have only begun to respond to the astonishing changes in our economy.

When I was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, the daughter of a disabled truck driver and a nurse, a strong union movement made it possible for my brother and sisters and I to have a decent way of life. My parents were able to own their own home, and I was able to go to college, thanks to a higher prevalence of union jobs and the better standard of living they represent. Then, one in three workers was part of a union. Now, it’s one in twelve. And working families like the one I grew up in are having to choose between sending their kids to school or paying for healthcare; buying gas or paying their rent.

My union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is leading the way in using union power to help workers adjust to these changes. The majority of SEIU members are women, and they know full well the difficulty in juggling work and family demands in a difficult economic situation.

We are, in essence, recreating the entire workplace landscape. Once simply an employer-employee relationship, union members are now negotiating on behalf of their entire families, making a difference not only in their lives but in their communities.

Union members now seek benefits that deal with the meshing of work and family life. Parental leave, sick leave banks, comp time, and flextime are common in SEIU contracts. But that’s not all. Workers are creating new rights that address real-life family and community needs.

• SEIU nurses have negotiated limits on mandatory overtime, a common hospital practice that wreaks havoc on nurses’ family lives and puts patient safety at risk.
• SEIU members have won the right to use paid leave to attend parent/teacher conferences and other school-related activities with their children.
• SEIU members worked with employers to provide a wide range of childcare, recreation, education, and special needs funding for more than 10,000 children in New York.
• Last year in California, SEIU women members led a coalition that won unprecedented legislation providing better levels of paid maternity and paternity leave and flexible work and family programs.
• Hundreds of thousands of janitors, home care workers, nursing home employees, and others have access to affordable health insurance today simply because they formed a union with SEIU.
• And in changing work environments like home based childcare, our union is creating new models of unions to give working families a voice and improve their lives and the services they provide.

But even with these hard-won victories, more and more workers are without healthcare, pensions, or other benefits. Two things must happen to reverse this trend: One, unions must replicate on a mass scale the strategies described above, and two, unions must launch dramatic new organizing campaigns to bring millions more workers into the union fold.

Progressive change has never happened in our country from the top down. Uniting workers to have a real voice in their jobs will ensure that progress happens from the workplace up.

Chapter Three Notes