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Flexibility in the absence of bargaining power: the consequences for work-life balance

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June 27, 2016
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by Alex J Wood

‘I had to change hours. . . I felt really sick, it just hit me, it hit all of us.’ These are the words that Colin used to describe the painful reality of workplace temporal flexibility for many workers. And it is an experience which is becoming increasingly common.

In the US, economists Lonnie Golden found that 28% of workers report having schedules with variable start and end times. A similar situation exists in Europe where around 35% of workers report facing changes in their work schedule.

The growth of flexible scheduling has caused significant public debate in UK. In particular, the growth of zero hour contracts, a form of employment which does not guarantee any hours of work, figured prominently in the 2015 general election. Labour party leader Ed Miliband coined the term ‘zero-zero Britain’ to highlight the unfairness of a ‘recovery’ in which the ‘rich paid zero tax while the poor received zero hours contracts’.

In response to such criticism the UK government drew upon think tank research to argue that such flexible scheduling was actually a good for workers, enabling them to ‘flex their work… [and thus be] more satisfied with their work life balance.’

In a recently published ethnographic study, I sought to evaluate whether such flexible employment could truly be considered beneficial for work-life balance.

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Do Maternity Leave Policies Hurt Mothers?

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June 23, 2014
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glass_blogimage_june-20141by Christy Glass

In a recent article published in Forbes (here), business writer Tim Worstall wonders why family-friendly policy advocates support paid maternity leave policies. In his view, such policies are not just ineffective but harmful to women because they damage women’s professional standing—and ultimately reduce their wages. Quoting a woman CEO who shares his views, Worstall argues that mothers should limit their time on paid leave or risk losing the confidence of their employer. So why on earth would anyone argue for more or better paid leave policies?

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Not Just a Workers’ Problem: The Consequences of Flexibility Stigma among Science and Engineering Faculty

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April 3, 2014
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by Erin A. Cech and Mary Blair-Loy

The widespread fascination with the TV series Mad Men is partly due to the stark contrast it draws between the postwar professional workforce portrayed in the series and the realities of that same workforce today. Although still largely male-dominated, professional occupations are no longer predominantly populated by men who serve as family breadwinners and have stay-at-home spouses. Women are in the workforce standing shoulder to shoulder with men as household earners and nearly half of couples with young children now juggle childcare responsibilities along with two careers. Despite a professional workforce demographic that is decidedly post-Mad Men, workplace arrangements and expectations of “ideal workers” in professions today could be ripped right out of a Mad Men script.

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Picture this: work

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March 12, 2014
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The beauty of contrast is that looking at one thing makes you focus on another. That is true in art but also for work and non-work. Which is why looking at pictures of motherhood can make us appreciate how important our images of work are: work does not work until we know what work looks like.

In late 2013, two contrasting photo series of women as mothers made the news in the UK. The first series was of Licia Ronzuli, Italian member of the European Parliament, and her daughter Vittoria. Pictures taken in parliament showed mother and daughter over three years, Victoria on her mother’s lap, playing with whatever tools of the trade were within the reach of her growing arms (pens, paper, headphones) and learning to raise her arm(s) to vote. In an earlier interview, Ronzuli said she brought her daughter to the workplace as a political act, to make women’s struggle between careering and caring more visible. The second series was the polar opposite: a collection of baby photographs from Britain’s Victorian days. Back then photography required several minutes of exposure, so mothers camouflaged themselves as chairs and curtains to hold their little darlings still for long enough. The babies’ expressions range from sceptical to petrified while their mothers morph into shapeless background figures.

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New book — “Unfinished Business” by Eileen Appelbaum and Ruth Milkman

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January 14, 2014
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AppelbaumUnfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy by Eileen Appelbaum and Ruth Milkman (Cornell, 2014).

This book analyzes the history of California’s decade-old paid family leave program, the first of its kind in the United States, which began operating in 2004.  Based on original fieldwork and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California adult population, it analyzes the impact of paid family leave on employers and workers in the most populous state in the U.S., and explores the implications for crafting future work-family policy for other states and for the nation as a whole.

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Building Flexibility Into The Way We Work

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November 20, 2013
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by Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen

Overworked? Overwhelmed? You’re not alone. Seventy percent of employed Americans say work interferes with their non-work lives. Over half feel they don’t have enough time with their children or spouses. This isn’t just one group: it’s mothers, fathers, married workers, singles, Boomers, GenXers and Millennials.

“Work-life balance” has been discussed for 40 years and many companies have tried to address the issue. Seventy-seven percent of workplaces with more than 50 employees allow some employees to change their schedules and 63% allow some regular work to be done at home. Unfortunately, flextime, telecommuting and shifting to part-time hours are usually provided as “accommodations” to help a few employees.

The root problem, of course, isn’t that employees have family or personal commitments. The root problem is the rigid conventions of work that assume work must occur at certain times and places and that mistakenly gauge productivity by the number of hours spent at work.

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The New Sexy: Millennial Egalitarian Men

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November 18, 2013
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by Joan Williams

A recent article in Slate (based on an article in the Guardian) reports that many young Japanese have lost interest in sex. The Japan Family Planning Association found that 45 percent of women aged 16-24, and 25 percent of the men, “were not interested in or despised sexual contact.” A 2011 survey found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in a romantic relationship. A third of Japanese under 30, according to another study, have never dated at all.

What’s the turnoff? Traditional gender roles. “Japan’s punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family,” the Guardian journalist Abigail Haworth writes, “while children are unaffordable unless both parents work.” Nearly 70 percent of Japanese women quit their jobs after their first child, forced out by long hours and hostility toward working mothers, not-so-affectionately called oniyome (“devil wives”).

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Work-Family Conflict is Not the Problem. Overwork Is.

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November 14, 2013
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by Robin J. Ely and Irene Padavic

Flexible work arrangements are widely championed as remedies for the dearth of women in senior leadership positions. Women “opt-out” when the demands of work and family conflict, so letting them telecommute or work part time facilitates work-life balance, allowing them to stay on the career track. Or so the narrative goes.

In reality, the success of these “family-friendly” policies has been uneven. They are often underused — and for good reason. Research shows that employees who take advantage of “flex” policies are typically removed from the fast track, derailing their career progress. Moreover, these programs have not increased the number of women in senior leadership roles.

Perhaps this is because they do not solve the right problem.

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Today’s Employees No Longer Look Like Don Draper, So Why is Work Still Designed for Him?

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November 12, 2013
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by Lindsey Trimble O’Connor and Christin L. Munsch

AMC’s hit show Mad Men has received widespread critical acclaim, in part, for its depiction of changing social mores surrounding gender, work, and family. Set in the 1960s, three-martini lunches, overt sexual harassment and stay-at-home wives are the norm. The workplace sure has changed … or has it?

Workplace norms of yesterday were based on a gendered division of labor in which men were breadwinners and women were caretakers. Because women took responsibility for the domestic realm, men could work full-time, without interruption, throughout their lives. With few — if any — disruptions from family life, men were able to put in long hours, on-site, day in and day out. Although these norms were sometimes demanding, workers who complied with them could expect to climb the corporate ladder.

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New book — The Work-Family Interface by Stephen Sweet

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July 9, 2013
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The Work-Family Interface: An Introduction by Stephen Sweet (SAGE, 2013).

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book The Work-Family Interface: An Introduction  (Sage 2014).  While there are so many good books and articles about work and family, I observed difficulties in locating an engaging narrative that succinctly explained the concepts and perspectives central to “work-family” scholarship.  So this book is designed to fill that gap and help instructors orient students (and other interested individuals) to the ways that home and jobs intersect.  Included in my discussions are the impacts that institutional arrangements have on lives, capacities to provide and receive care, family formation, business effectiveness, and sustainability.  It is also designed to demonstrate the connectedness of families across the world in the global economy.  The Work-Family Interface highlights policy paths taken, and those not taken, and the consequences that can be observed by comparing the United States with other societies.

-Stephen Sweet

Ithaca College