United States Lags Behind Other Nations in Making Work Family Friendly Library: BIZ Keywords: WORKPLACE EMPLOYEES EMPLOYERS US BENEFITS HEALTH CARE Description: As other countries move forward in helping employees balance their professional and home lives, the United States lags far behind in addressing the pressures on working families, says a Michigan State University researcher.
MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS Division of University Relations 403 Olds Hall Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824-1047
MEDIA CONTACT: Peter Berg, School of Labor & Industrial Relations, (517) 432-4771 or Kristan Tetens, University Relations, (517) 432-0921
4/29/02
MSU RESEARCHER FINDS UNITED STATES LAGS BEHIND OTHER NATIONS IN MAKING WORK FAMILY FRIENDLY
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- As other countries move forward in helping employees balance their professional and home lives, the United States lags far behind in addressing the pressures on working families, says Michigan State University researcher Peter Berg.
Berg, an assistant professor of labor and industrial relations at MSU, is co-author of a recent report published by the Economic Policy Institute.
"American workers who must care for children and/or elderly parents are really struggling," Berg says. "We have a lot to learn from the many countries that have found a happier balance between company requirements and family needs."
The report, "Shared Work, Valued Care: New Norms for Organizing Market Work and Unpaid Care Work," suggests that the experiences of companies and public policy in other countries can point the way for new U.S. workplace practices that would make it easier for American workers to balance the demands of career and family.
Berg and his colleagues, Ellen Appelbaum (Economic Policy Institute), Thomas Bailey (Columbia University) and Arne Kalleberg (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), studied workplaces in Japan, Australia, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy.
"The Netherlands, for example, has taken steps to help employees adjust their hours of work," Berg says.
"A recent law there gives employees the right to request to work shorter or longer hours. Employers are obligated to honor the request unless they can show there is a business reason to refuse," he says. "This has encouraged employees seeking flexibility to work part time without fear of losing their job or benefits."
Many European Union countries are reducing weekly working time and operating on more flexible work schedules, Berg adds.
"The standard work-week is 35 hours in the German metalworking industry, and most employers allow employees to put extra hours in working time accounts that can be used later as paid time off."
The report makes a number of recommendations for policy changes, including:
Hours-of-work legislation to allow for a shorter standard work-week, flexibility for workers, longer part-time hours and limits on mandatory overtime.
Adjustment-of-hours legislation to allow workers to request up to a 20 percent reduction in hours and pro-rated reductions in pay and benefits.
Equal opportunity and non-discrimination provisions to protect workers on part-time schedules from discrimination in pay or benefits.
Sharing the cost of care by investing in day care and elder care infrastructure and by providing subsidies for child care and elder care, short-term care givers' leave, subsidized wages or tax credits for care givers, universal preschool and before- and after-school programs for children.
Untying of benefits from individual employers by making access to health insurance available to everyone without regard to employment status and by establishing funds similar to unemployment insurance for maternity leave, parental leave and long-term family medical leave.
Updating of income security protections, such as unemployment insurance and old age pensions, to reflect the changes and great variety in family structure and in work arrangements.
"We are entering the 21st century in the United States with workplace practices that reflect a bygone era," Berg says. "The way work is scheduled and done just doesn't reflect current realities."
The report says that employers today expect to be entitled to "unencumbered workers," that is, employees who function as if they had a partner or other care giver at home full time.
That's an assumption that ignores the nature of the modern work force, says Berg.
"For one thing, it ignores the mass entrance of women into the work force over the past three decades. In 1967, only 41.2 percent of women over age 20 worked outside the home. By 1999, that figure had jumped to 60.1 percent," he says.
Men as well as women are experiencing the pressure to juggle work responsibilities with family duties.
"As a society, we have failed to help families balance their obligations at work and at home," Berg says. "It's not a question of abandoning one set of responsibilities for the other. We need to look seriously at how other countries have solved some of these problems and adapt their solutions to our own needs."
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NOTE TO MEDIA: For an executive summary of the report, contact Kristan Tetens at (517) 432-0921 or tetenskr at msu.edu.
The report was published by the Economic Policy Institute, which is a non-profit, non-partisan economic think tank founded in 1986. Its web site can be found at www.epinet.org
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