Past Blogs, January 2008

January 29, 2008

We finally saw Sicko, Michael Moore's depressingly clear picture of health care in the U.S. The movie shows us a system that does not work (ours) and several that do, worldwide. And if it doesn't push health care closer to the top of your list of priorities, read this Washington Post article from last Sunday. The combination should do the trick, and you should definitely see both before picking a candidate to support.

Here's some of what the leaders have said:

Hillary Clinton: Require everyone to get health insurance, subsidized by employers and the government; pay for it by rolling back tax cuts for households earning over $250,000 and savings in the existing system. Create a pool of private plans similar to the program for federal workers and one public plan similar to Medicare. Plans are portable from job to job. Expand Medicaid, State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Barack Obama: Require employers to provide insurance or contribute to the cost. Exempt smallest businesses and reimburse employers for catastrophic health costs. Provide subsidies for low-income people. Create a purchasing pool with choice of competing private plans and one public plan like Medicare. Expand Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Obama promises quality, affordable health care for all by the end of his first term in office.

John Edwards: Require employers to provide insurance or contribute to cost, with subsidies for low-income people. Create regional nonprofit pools that offer private plans and at least one public plan like Medicare. Expand Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program to serve adults below the poverty line and children and parents below 250 percent of the line.

John McCain: Sees controlling health costs as a top priority. Make plans portable and accessible across state lines. Provide $2,500 tax credits ($5,000 for families). Revise tax code to "eliminate the bias toward employer-sponsored health insurance." Move to compensate medical providers based on the quality of their work. Bring greater competition to drug markets by safe re-importation of drugs and streamlining the process for introducing generic drugs.

Mitt Romney: Opposes the mandate requiring everyone to obtain health insurance. Favors a free-market, consumer-based system. Wants to give states the flexibility to create programs and deregulate their insurance markets. Opposed to a national version of the plan he supported as a governor requiring insurance for all Massachusetts residents who could afford it. Make all health care expenses deductible. Give tax credits for insurance not provided by an employer. Eliminate "special treatment afforded employer-provided health plans." Get everyone "in the system" by driving down costs with market reforms. Assist low-income Americans in buying insurance plans of their choice.

A new poll in the New England Journal of Medicine gives a picture of some basic differences between Democrats and Republican voters.

I know there's no simple answer, but none of these plans sound like the simple systems that are working to help people live longer, healthier lives in Canada, the UK, France and even, believe it or not, Cuba. Like public education, libraries and other services in this country, health care is simply free.

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January 28, 2008

A note this morning from the National Partnership for Women & Families to anyone who lives in Maine or knows anyone who lives there . . .

Dear friends,

Our allies in Maine need you to take action before the upcoming House vote on paid sick days. Please take two minutes right now to help make sure hard-working Maine people have the right to paid sick days!

L.D. 1454, "An Act to Care for Working Families," sponsored by Representative Jackie Norton, would make sure Maine workers have that option. And now the bill will be up for a vote very soon. Your legislator needs to hear from you today!

• If you are a Maine resident, please contact your legislators in support of "An Act to Care for Working Families."
• If you are not a Maine resident, please forward this action alert to your friends and connections in the state.

When you work hard in Maine, you should be able to care for yourself and your family when illness strikes. But the fact is, though we all get sick, not all of us can afford to get well. The Maine Women's Lobby and the Maine Work and Family Coalition is promoting L.D. 1454, which would allow workers in businesses with 25 or more employees to earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. A recent amendment caps the number of sick days earned to 5 days per year. Opponents of this bill are working very hard to defeat it, so every phone call will count!

Please call your State Representative and State Senator right now and ask them to support L.D. 1454. Here's what you can do:

1. Call the House of Representatives switchboard at 1-800-423-2900.
2. Ask to leave a message for your legislator. Be sure to give your name and address (so they know you are a constituent), your phone number if you want a call back, and ask them to "please support paid sick days (L.D. 1454)."
3. Then call the Senate switchboard at 1-800-423-6900 and do the same.
4. Don't know who your legislators are? Visit http://janus.state.me.us/house/townlist.htm or e-mail the Maine Women's Lobby at info@mainewomen.org.

Thanks,

Kate, Rachna, Sharyn, and Steffany
Work and Family Team
National Partnership for Women & Families

January 25, 2008

WorldatWork, the total rewards organization, is looking for some good new research and they're willing to pay for it. They'll put out $100,000 to fund research projects that shed light on the best ways to recruit, retain, reward and motivate employees, whether it be by compensation, benefits, work-life balance, recognition and career development or all of the above.

There will be two separate funding opportunities – in Spring and Fall 2008 – and academics, non-profit and for-profit consultants, researchers, and other qualified individuals from all over the world are invited to submit a Letter of Intent outlining the research idea no later than February 21, 2008.

This is the second time the organization has funded research projects. Earlier grant winners: Texas A&M University, for a project called "The Relative Influence of Reward Strategies on the Attraction, Motivation, and Retention of Talented and Effective Employees." Their hypothesis is that "benefits and compensation will be particularly important for employee attraction, while recognition and development opportunities will be particularly important for employee motivation and retention, and work-life will be important for all three: attraction, motivation and retention."

Rutgers University, whose project is called "Implications of Employer-Supplied Connectivity Devices," will be investigating how technology either facilitates efficient and improved work-life balance or, on the other hand, fosters resentment or unhealthy work behaviors with the expectation to 'always be connected.'''

The University of Missouri, St. Louis, won a grant for a project called, "Organizational Culture and Reward Practices," that will examine "how an organization’s compensation and rewards programs are affected by both employer and employee values. Do certain organizational values lead to particular reward programs?" Click here for more information about how to apply.

January 22, 2008

The Fortune tenth-anniversary "100 Best Companies to Work For" list is out today, and there are some pretty interesting differences between this year's list and their first. Many of those differences give us a picture of how the U.S. economy and the business world has changed. Most of the winners, they point out, are privately held companies; ten years ago two-thirds were public. That makes sense; having no shareholders to answer to makes it easier to offer great perks and things that might irritate some investors, like domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples (72 of the 100 now do so, vs. 28 ten years ago). There are more law firms and service providers and a lot fewer manufacturers – just 14, compared with 31 ten years ago. What a difference ten years and technology have made in the manufacturing business.

Here's the paragraph we liked best from the release. "With unemployment rising and forecasters warning another recession may be just ahead, it's worth noting that the 100 Best Companies are phenomenal job-creation machines. They employed about 1.6 million people in 2007, up 16% from the year before. The average company on the list has 15,853 people on the payroll and gets 96,062 applicants each year."

January 21, 2008

What would Martin Luther King Jr. think? asks Michael Felton-O'Brien in an HR Executive online article. He reports on a new survey that says even though more than half the companies polled have official "diversity in the workplace" policies, three-fourths have either one or no minorities in their executive ranks.

The study was conducted by the New York-based Association of Executive Search Consultants, and its president, Peter Felix, says he was surprised by the results, "even though I'm conscious of the fact that there's a gap between what people claim about diversity and what is actually happening. ... Clearly, we've got a long way to go."

The article quotes Kenneth Arroyo Roldan, partner in the diversity practice at Battalia Winston, a New York-based executive search firm. Says Roldan, "There's a simple reason why diversity has not penetrated deeper into the nation's boardrooms. Diversity, he says, continues to be a "toothless tiger." By the time it gets down to the VPs who implement policy the message just isn't getting through. "Let's face it," he says, "executives will put on their hearing aids only when there's a forced slimming of their paychecks." And few are doing that.  

He thinks HR executives and their departments "need to be risk takers and challenge the hiring managers to not always 'hire in their own image' and be open to courting and retaining people of color."

January 18, 2008

Could this be true? An article in The Times of India with an Australian dateline says Microsoft is developing software that will link workers to their computers through wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. It may, says the article, help employers monitor the productivity, competence and physical well-being of employees while sitting at a distance. It will even reveal when an employee is stressed or frustrated by reading his/her heartbeat and facial expressions. It will be able to measure workers' heart rate, body temperature, brain signals, movement, facial expression and blood pressure.

Understandably, civil liberties groups and privacy lawyers are a little concerned.

Says the article, "Microsoft, which does not generally comment on the progress of its projects, has said in a statement that the use of heartbeat data is only an example of the type of monitoring that their software may facilitate."

Said a Microsoft VP, "This particular patent application, in general, describes an innovation aimed at improving activity-monitoring systems and uses the monitoring of user heart rate as an example of the kind of physical state that could be monitored to detect when users need assistance with their activities, and to offer assistance by putting them in touch with other users who may be able to help."

This may be no joke. The US Patent Office has confirmed that the application was published last month, 18 months after being filed. Patent lawyers say that it could be granted within a year.

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January 17, 2008

If you're confused about paid leave mandates and who's doing what, it's no surprise. Here's a roundup of what's going on in the country, with the help of a Fortune/CNNMoney.com article.

On February 5th, along with all the other important votes, the Washington, D.C. city council will vote on a bill that would make it the second U.S. city to require all businesses to provide paid sick leave for their staff.

In 2006, San Francisco voters approved a law mandating paid sick leave for all businesses in that city. It's still the only place in the country that has done so, but more than a dozen states were inspired to introduce similar legislation in 2007 and three more are likely to do so this year. You can go to a National Partnership for Women & Families site to see if yours is among them.

And waiting in the wings is the Congressional Healthy Families Act sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), which would require every employer in the nation with more than 15 employees to provide seven days a year of paid leave.

Proponents say this is not only a worker-rights issue, but could help businesses as well by promoting worker retention. And allowing employees to stay home when ill would help avoid "presenteeism," the enemy of productivity. But the proof will be in the pudding, as they say, and everyone is looking at San Francisco.

Since last June the city has required employers with 10 or fewer workers to provide five days of annual paid leave, while larger employers must pay for nine days a year. So far, implementation has been "quite smooth," says Donna Levitt, head of the city's Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. That department's website explains to employers how to obey the new law, and it's gotten "a huge number of hits," says Levitt. San Francisco Chamber of Commerce vice-president Jim Lazarus says he's heard few complaints from local business owners about the law. He estimates that 90% of the city's employers already met the new law's requirements. They've issued an electronic handbook to help explain how to navigate the new law.

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January 14, 2008

While doing some work for our Minnesota Work-Life Champions project I stumbled over a pretty fascinating and informative Website. It's from last year, and it's hard to tell (at least for me) whether it's sponsored by CNNMoney.com or Fortune or both. But it's just one blog after another about the companies on Fortune's Best Place to Work list.

It's not that it's so interesting because it's an expose of what it's really like to work for some of these companies, although it certainly does offer some frank second opinions. I found it instructive because many of people's comments get to the heart of the matter.

Flexibility doesn't work if it means working any 60 or even 100 hours you want. For bigger companies, great cultures often don't translate to the local office. Fair and equitable salaries beat "fluff" and reality often doesn't match spin.

One person says this about his very highly rated company, "I am frowned upon for using any sick days (even for my children), am forced to use vacation days during the holiday week so they can close the building, and they do not like it when I take time off for doctors' appointments (either for myself or for my children)." Presumably "they" is his manager.

It goes on and on, with pages and pages of entries. But just reading a few of them makes you wonder if it's true, as one participant said, that "American workers just don't get it. The halcyon days are over." We don't believe it, but even if it's not true, it doesn't hurt to remind ourselves that cultural transformation needs to be systemic and not dependent on the whims of an individual manager.

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January 12, 2008

At first, the new study that found women with happy marriages are less stressed at the end of the day sounded like, duh. Who wouldn't be less stressed if you go home to a less stressful marriage? But there was a surprise hidden in the study by the Sloan Center on Everyday Families at UCLA. It turns out the results were very different for men. Researchers studied 30 couples, each a two-parent, two-career family with at least two children. First they checked the state of their marriage. Then, four times a day over the course of a week, the couples were asked to answer questions and measure their stress by testing their own saliva to record the level of the stress hormone cortisol. It turned out that men’s stress level decreased in the evening after work regardless of how they felt about their marriage. Women’s decreased only when they were in what they considered a satisfactory marriage.

January 10, 2008

Some suggestions for reducing presenteeism
It's flu season, and a new report from CCH suggests that even though just one out of four organizations know what they're going to do if a large number of employees become ill, they may have more to lose if those mildly ill people come to work than if they don't. Here are their suggestions for reducing "presenteeism."

Take another look at your disciplinary policies; an organization that disciplines an employee for taking an extra day of sick time needs to be aware that doing so may bring sick employees to work while they can still spread germs. The latest CCH survey found 89% of organizations use disciplinary action to control absences.

Paid sick leave or paid leave banks are an effective way to help manage presenteeism, and 69% of employers reported using those to help control presenteeism.

Carry-over policies that allow employees to carry over some or all of their unused sick days may allow employees a better way to manage the time they need to recoup. Next year's flu season may not be as severe, and employees often have good and bad years when it comes to their health, says CCH. Just 43% of organizations surveyed allow employees to carry over sick time from one year to the next.

Wellness and flu shot programs are a proactive approach, and more companies are catching on. The CCH Survey found 60% of employers offer wellness programs and 66% offer flu shot programs.

January 9, 2008

Now that New Hampshire voters have changed the dynamics again, we might take another look at some of the positions of the front-runners when it comes to work-life issues. The latest TakeCare.Net poll of the candidates found all the leading Democrats agree on expanding the FMLA, ensuring a minimum number of paid sick days, increasing funding for childcare and after-school programs, and raising the minimum wage.

Rather than supporting conversion of the Child Tax Credit for a Caregiver Credit, for example, Clinton described a separate $3,000 caregiver tax credit. Obama proposes to quadruple the number of infants and toddlers participating in Early Head Start. While Edwards didn't say he supported expanding Head Start, he did promise to help all states provide universal preschool for four-year olds. 

None of the Republicans chose to respond to TakeCare.Net's poll, and it's difficult to compare apples with apples, but here are some of the leaders' positions:

While McCain voted for the FMLA in 1993, he calls expanding it "an unfunded liability" for businesses and will not support expansions of government without them being fully funded. He says, "Are we going to be more and more like France?" France, he says, wants to move away from these same failed policies.

After saying in 1999 that he wouldn't support overturning Roe v. Wade, he now calls it a "flawed decision" and wants it overturned and the question of abortion rights returned to the states. He wants to allow people to buy health insurance nationwide through any organization or association they choose, as well as through their employers or directly from an insurance company, and wants tax credits to help families buy insurance.

He thinks the issue of gay marriage and civil unions ought to be decided at the state level. And an e-mail from People for the American Way reminds us that he is "proud that we have Justice Alito and Roberts on the United States Supreme Court." And when asked whether he admires any Supreme Court justice in particular, he said, "Of course, Antonin Scalia."

Gov. Mitt Romney says he will champion a federal marriage amendment to protect marriage as the union of a man and a woman. One of the biggest threats to the fabric of our society," he says, "is out-of-wedlock childbirth. As recently as a few months ago, a judge in Iowa said that gay couples have the right to marry because current marriage law 'operates ONLY to harm same sex couples and their children.' Astonishing," he calls it. Astonishing indeed.

January 7, 2008

News from the West

Back in Minnesota from a wonderful two weeks, tan, rested and overfed, our attention is immediately on politics and the East coast races. But this morning another part of the country was heard from. Arizona State University released the results of an interesting poll of four states in the Southwest – Arizona, Nevada, Texas and New Mexico. The survey asked about immigration, a huge issue in the Southwest and intimately related to the second question, the one about the presidential race.

You might expect McCain and Richardson to do fairly well in these states, but illegal or undocumented immigration will have a strong influence on voters, and both want a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. While 24% of respondents were Hispanic, Richardson, both from New Mexico and Hispanic, got just 6% of the total vote. Asked if immigrants help the state more than they hurt it, 38% said yes, but 58% said illegal immigration is a "very serious" problem and 90% of those over 31 feel it's a serious problem.

Southwesterners estimate that undocumented immigrants account for at least a fourth of their states’ population, and McCain and Sen. Ted Kennedy sponsored the controversial bill in 2006 that would have allowed illegal immigrants to apply to become citizens after learning English, paying fines and back taxes and clearing a background check. And in his own back yard, John McCain came in second among Republicans with 13% to Rudy Giuliani's 19%.

Among Democrats, it was Clinton 33%, Obama 26% and Edwards 8%.

The results, of course, could be totally different by tomorrow, after Iowa and New Hampshire, and that all-important undecided vote is as big in the Southwest as it is everywhere; 23% of both Democrats and Republicans were undecided.

January 4, 2008 -- by Anne Nolan, operations, customer support and contributing editor

This morning we bid a fond farewell to the 2008 presidential campaign of FMLA author Chris Dodd, who officially only reached 0.02% in last night's Iowa caucus results. But as this former caucusgoer can tell you, he probably had a lot more folks than that show up for him – they just didn't meet the 15% threshold for a "viable group" in most of the places they showed up. (That 0.02% result shows that in a few caucus locations, Dodd's supporters actually did reach the 15% necessary to earn a delegate to the next level.) Most of those in "non-viable groups" didn't go home; they just "realigned" with groups supporting Obama (37.58%), Edwards (29.75%), Clinton (29.47%), or possibly remaining "uncommitted" (0.14%).

As the national spotlight moves on to other states, delegates elected from their caucuses last night will go on to their county conventions, then their congressional district conventions, then their state convention, and eventually some will become Iowa's delegates to the parties' national conventions. They'll be face-to-face and argument-to-argument with their fellow activists and party leaders, working out platform planks, convention rules, and who gets to go on to the next level. Some of them will find it exhilarating and discover they've been bitten by the political bug for life.

Iowa cherishes its first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses not only for the national spotlight it shines on the state every four years, but for the fresh wave of activists it brings in each time. More than half of the people who caucused for a Democrat last night had never been to a caucus before. A bunch of these new faces will someday show up running for local, state, and eventually higher offices. (Some of us move out to other states and get involved there, too.) Iowa doesn't just grow corn and soybeans; every four years it harvests a new crop of committed, informed activists. That's why we love our caucuses.

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