The American Workplace Is Stuck in the '50s

By Sarah Sattelmeyer and Margy Waller, AlterNet. Posted June 25, 2008.

It's not your grandfather's labor market.

What changed? A generation ago, a typical American household consisted of a family with two parents: a working father, who often earned enough to support the entire family, and a stay-at-home mother. Today, however, most households with children need the incomes from two jobs to make ends meet. One of the most significant trends over the past 50 years has been the movement of women, especially mothers, into the paid labor force. Now that most women have entered the workforce, a two-parent, middle-income family has a husband working full-time and a wife working approximately three-quarters of full-time.

Complicating efforts to manage work-life responsibilities, employer work schedules can be inflexible and many working women must work irregular hours that include nights, evenings and weekends. One-third of working women work shifts that differ from those worked by a spouse or partner. Between 1979 and 2004, the combined annual hours of work among families with children rose by 18 percent, the equivalent of every family putting in an additional 13.5 weeks of full-time work per year.

Today, in 70 percent of households, all adults work, resulting in an increasing number without a stay-at-home parent or primary caretaker. While family dynamics and living arrangements have changed, the typical requirements of work have not, creating a mismatch between workplace expectations and workforce needs. Nearly half of all employees report conflicts between jobs and other responsibilities, more so than a generation ago, and many workers do not have access to opportunities to balance work-life responsibilities, such as paid sick days, family and medical leave, or flexibility in the workplace.

Today, workers need to be able to make use of a variety of work-life policies. Our national work-life policies must also address the needs of people living alone, a living arrangement that has grown dramatically since the 1950s, when only 9 percent of households consisted of people living alone. By 1970, people living alone represented 17 percent of households. In the 1990s, the number had grown to 21 percent, more than all other types of living arrangements. By 2005, 26 percent of households consisted of people living alone, and the percentage exceeded that of households made up of married parents and their own children. People living alone also need time off to deal with responsibilities of extended family and other obligations. Unlike the occupants of households with more than one adult, people living alone must deal with these obligations on their own.

A new labor standard for paid sick days

Despite these shifts in our society and labor force, only about 50 percent of workers are offered paid sick days. A mere 39 percent of low-wage jobs offer any paid sick days for personal illness, compared to 79 percent of jobs held by higher-wage employees. While many higher-income workers also benefit from the Family and Medical Leave Act adopted during the Clinton-Gore administration, workers who cannot afford to go without the income from work are less likely to use the federally guaranteed unpaid leave. Nearly three-quarters of all workers who benefit from family and medical leave policies earn $30,000 or more annually. Among workers who needed leave but did not take it, not being able to afford unpaid leave was the most commonly reported reason.

Even occasional job-protected unpaid sick days or leave to handle community or household responsibilities are not an option for many low-wage workers. Workers fear job loss or disciplinary action (such as fewer or less desirable shift assignments) for taking time off. Only about one-third of all jobs provide employees complete or much control in scheduling work hours. About 38 percent of jobs held by low-wage and low-income employees are low-flexibility jobs, compared to 19 percent of other jobs.

Our public and private policy must acknowledge this reality and provide ways to turn low-wage jobs from bad jobs into better jobs. Given these gaps, a new labor standard -- like the national minimum wage created by federal law -- establishing a universal right to take time off for short-term illness would strengthen our labor market and turn millions of bad jobs into better ones.

A comprehensive set of work-life policies would be a significant step in enhancing our labor market standards. Strengthening the labor market in this way requires that decision-makers acknowledge these changes in our labor market and living arrangements, including the growth of single, single-parent, and two-working-parent households.

See more stories tagged with: workplace flexibility, womenomics, work-life policies, family leave, medical leave

Sarah Sattelmeyer is senior research associate and Margy Waller is executive director at The Mobility Agenda. They are co-authors, along with Heather Boushey and Layla Moughari, of a new report: Work-Life Policies for the Twenty-First Century Economy.