Blog, cont'd,  Susan Seitel, WFC Resources

A summary of policies

June 24, 2008

Four experts in work-life policies have created what they call "The Mobility Agenda: Work-Life Policies for the Twenty-First Century Economy." Among other things, the four, Heather Boushey, Layla Moughari, Sarah Sattelmeyer and Margy Waller, have compared existing public work-life policies in the U.S., and it was a good reminder for us. In case you'd like a summary, here's what they report regarding state and city policies:

State temporary disability insurance programs exist in California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. They cover leave for a personal health condition, and are generally jointly funded by employers and employees. 

The Washington State Family Leave Insurance Program provides up to five paid weeks for most employees to care for a newborn or newly-adopted child. The California Disability Compensation Program extends California’s temporary disability insurance to cover caring for a child, spouse, parent, or domestic partner and bonding with a new child. And the New Jersey Paid Family Leave Law extends the state’s temporary disability insurance program and allows workers up to six weeks of family leave benefits to care for a sick family member or new child. 

As for cities, the San Francisco Paid Sick Days Ordinance provides nine paid sick days for full-time workers and a pro-rated number of days for part-time workers. The Washington D. C. Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act provides three to seven paid sick or “safe” days annually for workers, depending on company size.

There are two proposed federal work-life policies. (We were able to download "widgets" that allow us to track their progress). The Healthy Families Act would require employers to pay employees for sick days without reimbursement from the federal government. It offers a minimum of seven paid sick days for full-time workers; pro-rated for part-time workers. It would allow workers to care for themselves or immediate family members with a short-term illness or injury. It allows time to access preventive care.  

The second is the Family Leave Insurance Act. That was introduced exactly a year ago and referred to the Committee on Finance (what do those committees do with these bills?) It would create an insurance mechanism in which employees and employers would each pay half of the premiums and employers would administer payment of benefits. It would offer up to eight weeks of paid family and medical leave annually. Family leave wouldn’t begin until an employee had been away for their job for one week. It would allow for birth or adoption of a child or care of a seriously ill child, parent or spouse. 

The Families & Work Institute’s new National Study of the Changing Workforce found no change since 2005 in the maximum length of caregiving leaves offered to new mothers and fathers following childbirth, new adoptive parents and employees caring for seriously ill family members. And the number of employers providing full pay during the period of maternity-related disability went down from 27% in 1998 to 16% now. 

What will it take before the U.S. joins the rest of the world in realizing the importance of parenting?

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The immigration mess

June 19, 2008

Last year, President Bush called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. We thought his plan was comprehensive and fair, but Congress declined. Since then, the country has become a hodge-podge, with states doing their own thing, the President ordering everyone to use E-Verify, despite the fact that it is rife with errors and misinformation, and each state seems to be doing something different. Some are punishing employers, some are punishing unions, everyone is punishing illegal immigrants and Arizona is leading the country in, as the Washington Post puts, becoming unhinged.

Last year, the Post reminds us, "traumatized by a tidal wave of illegal immigrants," Arizona enacted "the nation's most pitiless law to punish employers who hire undocumented workers." The law began almost immediately to do what it was intended to do. Immigrant neighborhoods began to empty out. Now businesses are realizing that even if the economy is down, they're going to need workers if they want to participate in the recovery. As one company owner put it, "Arizona at the end of the day is a desert. If we become a more risky or a more costly place of doing business than the other 49 states, which today we are, we will become a declining economy in perpetuity." So the Arizona legislature is on its way to passing a temporary guest-worker program that would bring in Mexican workers to replace the ones they've lost.

In San Francisco, as we report in our July Newsbrief, a federal appeals court ordered 33 janitors, who had been fired when their Social Security numbers didn’t match the E-Verify database, to be reinstated. Employees, said the court, can’t be fired just because the Social Security number they submit differs from the number in the government’s files.

The Kansas Senate voted to punish unions with fines ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 if they collect dues from an illegal alien, and unions are complaining that the state is punishing them but letting employers off scott-free. And in Waterloo, Iowa, 297 illegal immigrants were sentenced to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents. While most illegals have been deported, these men, who said their supervisors and managers were aware their documents were false, were jailed and shackled, pled guilty and were sentenced, all in four days. Civil rights activists warned of due process violations.

We just wish Congress would take another look at it.

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Sun offers some nuts and bolts measurements

June 10, 2008

Sun’s iWork (now Open Work) program is about 12 years old now, and we've been following it for about seven of those years. In 2006 we wrote that the program, which allows employees to work from anywhere in the world, gives them great flexibility in getting talent wherever they can get it, and it doesn’t really matter if somebody’s in Colorado or England or Germany. It allows employees to choose either a traditional, work-in-the-office-every-day setup, at-home work three to five days a week, or a "flexible" arrangement that lets staff work from home or at any Sun location in the world, including one of the firm’s many urban drop-in centers. More than half of their employees now work without an assigned office. Anyone can apply; an application form is on the company’s Website.

This is one of those win/win/win programs, loved by employees, producing results for the company, and helping to save the planet. We know it saves this company a fortune in real estate costs, and while we're on the subject of saving the earth, here are some new Sun findings:

• Employees saved an average of more than $1,700 per year in gasoline and wear and tear on their vehicles by working at home an average 2.5 days a week.
• The average worker only used 64 watts per hour at home, compared to 130 watts per hour in a Sun office.
• Commuting was responsible for 98% of each employee’s carbon footprint.
• Working from home two and a half days per week saves two and a half weeks of commuting time per year.
• The same amount of work at home saves 5400 kilowatt hours of energy per year.

This month we've seen somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 articles about commuting costs and gas prices, which are now in the $4.00 per gallon neighborhood. Nearly all of them conclude that telecommuting is one answer. Clearly, it's the perfect time to try a telework pilot. Ask me for suggestions about how to go about it - Susan@WFCResources.com 

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June 3, 2008

Corporate America, it's time to go green

Who would have thought the word "greening" would ever be a word, much less a verb, an adverb, an adjective, a noun, part of a title of companies and a new way of life.

According to a 2006 survey by Care2, 48% of employees would work for less pay if they could work for a socially responsible company. And in April of this year, 19% of more than 5,500 Beyond.com network visitors responded to this poll question – “How important is finding an environmentally-aware workplace for your next job?” – by saying it would be a deciding factor between two similar jobs; 16% said it was a requirement.

Being green is a socially responsible way to be, and our guest column this month, by ICF International's Margery Sher, offers the business case for doing so, several good examples of companies that are good at it, and a guide for getting started.

Clearly, said the Beyond.com article, "having an environmentally-friendly workplace is becoming more than just a trend. Companies that make the decision to invest time, money and resources to 'go green' are not only helping the earth, but are also attracting a number of potential employees" at a time when that's getting harder and harder to do.

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