New Paradigm forum discusses need for a more flexible workplace

Following the Oct. 20 New Paradigm symposium at the Carnegie Endowment Center for International Peace in Washington, D.C., panel participant Bill Fletcher, right, assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO, speaks with Cornell ILR-in-Washington students, juniors Luke Barefoot and Elizabeth Henry. Andrea Sweeney

By Andrea Sweeney

A recent study by Rutgers University and the Center for the Advancement of Health found that the No. 1 workplace issue for employees is the need for time -- over job security and relationships with colleagues and supervisors. On Oct. 20, a panel of distinguished guests at the Carnegie Endowment Center for International Peace in Washington, D.C., addressed this issue and discussed how to create more time for working families. "Flex Time in the Corporate Culture and the Role of Collective Bargaining," a continuation of the New Paradigm Symposiums at Cornell's Institute for Women and Work, drew in a packed room of more than 120 students, scholars, advocates and Cornell alumni to debate the importance of flexibility in today's cutthroat work environments.

The forum, funded by the Ford Foundation and Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, was co-moderated by Betty Friedan, distinguished visiting Cornell professor, and Francine Moccio, director of Cornell's Institute for Women and Work. Other panelists included: Donna Dolan, director of Work and Family Issues, Communication Workers of America (CWA), District 1; Bill Fletcher, assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO; Phyllis Moen, the Ferris Family Professor of Life Course Studies in Cornell's College of Human Ecology; and Chad Stone, senior economist, Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the White House.

Reminding the audience of a time when women used to hide their pregnancies so they would not be penalized at work, Friedan addressed the progress that has been made in the past 30 years. However, she also noted that there are new issues that have to be addressed as we move into the new millennium. "The new questions have to do with family and work," Friedan said.

By heading the New Paradigm Symposiums, Friedan has shifted her focus from beyond gender into a movement that will help working families. What are the ways to help stressed out and overworked parents? Panelists and audience participants agreed that flextime work arrangements and shorter work weeks would take the strain off both working women and men.

Friedan also emphasized the role of collective bargaining as a key player in helping employees manage their careers and lives.

"We have always thought of unions as the way to raise our wages and health benefits, but time in this new millennium is important to mention. We have to expand our concept of strictly defining the bottom line as dollars and cents to question quality of life issues ... such as time," Friedan said.

Addressing the recent changes in two social institutions, work and family, Moen commented that the "borders between work and family are increasingly blurred as people can answer their e-mail at home and have cell phones. Really the idea of work and family being separated is increasingly less and less true." Moen described changes in the work/family/community interface since preindustrial society, when people worked in small family businesses or farms, and there was not as solid a division between work, family and community because "everyone was engaged in productive labor for the family economy."

Today, Moen argued, everyone is faced with "his job, her job and their family responsibilities, as well as their community responsibilities." Workers want to work less to be able to have more time for their communities and their families. However, they are afraid they are going to be penalized if they take time off to raise children or do not work the 70-hour work week that is so glorified in today's society. Moen argued that "we cannot just look at changing work as snapshots, but we also have to think of re-writing our whole template about career paths" in order to work fewer hours.

Reporting on the Council of Economic Advisers Report to the President, "Families in the Labor Market 1969-1999: Analyzing the Time Crunch," Stone pointed out that there has been a 30 percent increase in the number of women who work for pay since 1969, from 38 percent of married women to 68 percent as of 1999. However, not only has the percentage of employed women increased, but the number of hours they work has also risen. This has had a tremendous effect on families. "Families, on average, experienced a decrease of 22 hours per week of personal time, that is, a 14 percent decrease in the parental time that was available outside of paid work that they could spend with their children," he said. Despite this dramatic rise in working hours, "the middle 50 percent and bottom 25 percent were virtually flat in their income gains ... so they are experiencing a time crunch but not necessarily income gains that might in some way offset it."

From a union perspective, Fletcher and Dolan addressed how collective bargaining can alleviate the time crunch for working families. Employees, Fletcher said, want to increase "their ability to be at home with their families, to take care of sick relatives or friends, to alter their work day in such a way that coincides with other needs they have, that is, a desire for more free time." Unions have helped by negotiating creative flexible programs for many of their workers, such as telecommuting, part-time workers' benefits and shift swaps. For example, the United Auto Workers and Blue Cross-Blue Shield in Michigan recently bargained a contract to allow their service representatives to telecommute. CWA and Bell Atlantic, according to Dolan, have set up programs that would allow them to create a more flexible work environment. Contracts also include gradual return after the birth of a child and allowing workers to take days off in hourly increments when needed. Dolan argued that "collective bargaining is one way we are going to make changes" for working families. But as Fletcher noted, hard-won bargaining gains on work and life balance can only come from a strengthened and enlarged labor movement.

The next New Paradigm Symposium, "Unlocking the Closed Door Policy of U.S. Child Care: A Universal versus Mother-Centered Approach," will explore the philosophical underpinning of child-care policies in the United States as compared with its European counterparts. The seminar will be held Dec. 1 at the Carnegie Endowment Center for International Peace. For more information, call Wei Chen at the Institute for Women and Work, (212) 340-2895.