Life Meets Work Blog

We know most of our major politicians juggle family and work responsibilities, but this year the nomination of Sarah Palin brought that issue to the forefront. 

To date, much discussion has focused on the candidates’ personal work/life situations—Palin bringing her baby to work, Obama keeping in touch with his girls via webcam, Biden raising two young sons as a single working dad.

But despite growing market focus on work/life concerns, the public debates and ad campaigns haven’t been focusing on the issues from a policy perspective.  That’s why the Families and Work Institute organized conference calls to get at the issue.  They spoke with top policy advisors from the Obama and McCain campaigns on September 16th and September 24th, respectively.

Conference transcripts are available.  Here’s an overview of the candidates’ plans regarding key work/life issues—as reflected during the calls:

Obama

• Flexible Work: Create a program to educate businesses on the advantages of flexible work.  Increase federal incentives for telecommuting.  Make the federal government a model employer by adopting flexible work schedules.  Obama is also a co-sponsor of the Working Families Flexibility Act, allowing employees to request flexible work schedules and receive fair consideration.
• Family and Medical Leave Act: Expand the act from businesses with 50 or more employees to 25 or more.  Also expand the act to include elder care needs, up to 24 hours for children’s academic activities, and domestic violence issues. Provide incentives for states to adopt paid leave system—such as California’s Paid Family Leave Insurance Program.
• Sick Leave: Require employers to provide workers seven days of paid sick leave per year that could be use for themselves or for the care of a close family member.

Obama’s representative also addressed issues such as health care coverage, early education, childcare tax credits, and fair pay. More from the Obama/Biden issues pages.

McCain

• Flexible Work: Create a Commission on Workplace Flexibility and Choice to make recommendations to him as President on how to modernize labor laws, retirement planning, and health care portability, and promoting telework.
• Family and Medical Leave: Does not support expanding the program or providing paid leave. Favors relying on market demand for such programs. 
• Sick Leave: Does not support mandating paid sick leave—again in favor of market demand.

McCain’s representatives also discussed issues such as trading overtime pay for compensation time, health care coverage and access, energy policy, early education, and elder care.  More from the McCain/Palin issues pages.

Posted by Jaime.

We just finished our first national study examining Americans’ attitudes on flexible work on the role of government in work/life issues. Here’s one key finding: Both employers (63%) and workers (78%) support the Working Families Flexibility Act.

The act (S. 2419 has been referred to the Senate Committee of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) would give every worker the right to request job flexibility and would require employers to respond to the request.

This kind of legislation is already in place in Italy, Spain, Germany, and the U.K. Lessons learned: It didn’t create a new protected class of citizens and it didn’t open the floodgates with requests for flexible work. It simply encouraged more companies to develop win-win scenarios for themselves and their employees.

In this day and age, it often doesn’t matter when or where we work. It’s productivity and results that matter. Best Buy is reaping rewards with its results-only workplaces, and companies like Deloitte are saving millions in turnover costs.

Read the bill for yourself and tell us what you think.

We’ll review more findings and discuss the implications at our free webinar at 1:00 CST on Tuesday, October 28.

Posted by Jaime.