Industry/Policy Paper
Work and Family
Sociologists have been concerned with institutional friction between work and family systems in the industrialized West as far back as the 1960's, when Lewis and Rose Laub Coser first labeled both the family and workplace as “greedy institutions” that monopolized individuals’ time and energy. Although the problem has been framed in different ways at different times and places, the essential sociological insight that ties them all together has been that the personal difficulties individuals face in trying to fulfill both family and paid work responsibilities are socially patterned and somewhat predictable given the competing logics of industrial production and family reproduction. The FMLA has been praised for supporting employee work/life issues and engendering a family-friendly workplace. However, its successes have not come without problems. Since its inception in 1993, employers have found FMLA certification, administration, tracking, and compliance confusing and problematic. Employers have argued that the law's ambiguous language makes it hard to certify, track, and administer leave, particularly intermittent leave. When the FMLA became law in February 1993, most women and children's advocacy groups were elated. However, many business groups protested that the law, which allows employees at companies with 50 or more workers up to 12 weeks' unpaid leave to care for himself or herself, a newborn, a newly adopted child, or a seriously ill family member--would exact an unfairly heavy toll from employers. Years later, the FMLA remains controversial: Some argue it is too broad in scope, others that it is not broad enough.
Although the “traditional” family—a father who works outside the home and financially supports the children and a mother whose work is keeping the house and raising the children—has been disappearing for more than a generation, our workplaces and government policies have not kept pace with America’s new reality. Most children are growing up in homes with both parents working or with single parents. One-third of workers don’t have access to paid sick leave, and only 42 percent have paid personal leave (“Work and Family”). What’s the impact on public health when working people can’t afford to take sick days during a flu epidemic? Who takes care of a sick child? Who’s home to fix dinner and help with homework? Who can dedicate time to a sick elderly parent? The recession and jobless recovery have complicated life further for working families, when having to leave work for a family emergency could lead to long-term unemployment. Collective bargaining provides working people the opportunity to make their workplaces work for working families (Hodson & Sulivan 135). Many unions have arrived at innovative agreements that help working people meet their family obligations while ensuring the employer can succeed.
For American workers, a good job has many defining characteristics: a fair wage or salary, health care benefits, a safe work environment, and the ability to take time off work when needed without losing pay. Institute for Women’s Policy Research has studied several types of paid time off from work: paid sick leave that’s usable by employees with little or no advance notice, to recuperate from illness, seek medical care, or care for family members; and, longer-term leave such as family and medical leave, parental leave, and disability leave, taken by fewer employees but for longer periods. More than forty percent of private sector workers in the United States have no access to paid sick days (PSD). Paid sick days legislation, which would require businesses to provide leave when workers or their children are ill, has been introduced each year since 2005 in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. PSD is also the focus of several campaigns around the country at the local, state, and federal levels.
Today, most families need two wage earners to make ends meet, making a couple-level analysis especially important. Women who do not have a “wife” at home are disadvantaged in a workplace that increasingly requires constant availability. It is easier to stay late at work, go in to work with only a few hours’ notice, and answer e-mails on the weekends if you have a partner who is able to make sure that the children are picked up from school, that there are groceries in the refrigerator, and the housework gets done. This is true in both blue- and white-collar jobs. Mandatory overtime and work schedules that are provided a few days in advance and that may have only starting but not stopping times mean that blue-collar workers may have little control over their own schedules and no way of predicting what their hours will be, even from day to day. A similar change has occurred in white-collar and executive jobs. Communication technology that has made it easier to work from home has also made it easier for work to be demanded at any hour of the day. Nevertheless, gender differences in employment and wages do not become marked until the arrival of children – when caregiving demands begin to conflict dramatically with work demands.
Davis documents three groups of women: those with steady employment (30 or more hours per week every year, who had left the labor force at most for one year), women with pulled-back employment (part-time workers or those out of the labor force), and women whose employment trajectories have been interrupted (two or more episodes of unemployment, usually working full-time when employed, with a difficult time being either a steady or pulled-back employee). Davis argues that woman’s labor market experiences are structured by social class, but not in ways that conform to the need/choice framework (Davis).
Old dads are presented as traditional fathers who commit themselves primarily to their work and to being the family breadwinner. Many of their decisions stem from their tendency to see their financial obligations to support their family as their top priority. Their stress is often connected to the expectations they have of themselves to achieve more in their work; they tend to expect less of themselves when it comes to nurturing their children. Yet, according to Kaufman, these fathers appear to be more attentive to their children than were the old dads from previous eras (Marsiglio).
New dads, on the other hand, see themselves as much more than financial providers and have, in some respects, become the new normal. They have a more balanced orientation toward their work and family responsibilities. Because they generally hold less conventional gendered beliefs, they deliberately try to accept and accommodate their partner’s employment activities. At times, they adjust their work schedules and priorities, but they do not fundamentally challenge their work arrangements. Compared to old dads and “superdads”, new dads are described as experiencing more conflict and stress because they simultaneously have strong commitments to work and family.
Men who treat caregiving as a primary concern, opposed to being the breadwinner, face discrimination and hostility in the workplace (Garcia). Despite the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993, which provides eligible employees with twelve weeks of job-protected unpaid leave, companies are less likely to offer paternity leave than they are to offer maternity leave. Further, maternity leaves are usually longer and more likely to be paid than paternity leaves. Men who use paternity leave policies may be viewed negatively and thought to be taking “vacation” rather than actually caring for their own child.
Even though FMLA is fairly new, there have been court cases regarding the topic. The Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc case was held March 19, 2002. According to Cornell University Law School, this was the first time in history that the Supreme Court agreed to review a case under the Family Medical Leave Act. The Supreme Court was asked to determine the validity of a portion of the Department of Labor regulations, which interprets the FLMA. The regulations in question disproportionately and unnecessarily penalize employers for failing to designate employee leave as "FMLA leave." The Labor Department's interpretation allows an employee to stack FMLA leave on top of other types of paid or unpaid time off and results in an employee receiving more than the 12 weeks of leave required under the FMLA. The petitioner exhausted seven months of employer-provided leave for the treatment of cancer. When she then requested additional leave under the FMLA, the company informed her that her FMLA leave had been exhausted. However, her employer had not given her prior notice that the leave being provided counted towards her 12-week allowance of FMLA leave. The Court reviewed one particular regulation (one sentence) promulgated by the DOL, which states as follows: “If an employee takes paid or unpaid leave and the employer does not designate the leave as FMLA leave, the leave taken does not count against an employee’s FMLA entitlement.” The Court decided that this regulation is invalid because it contradicts the remedy provisions provided by Congress in the FMLA Act itself. In essence, the Court said that the DOL regulation contains a remedy that contradicts the remedies passed by Congress. In another FMLA case, Saroli v. Automation and Modular Components, Inc. that occurred in 2005 was dealing with a constructive discharge of an employee after returning from maternity leave. Marria Saroli was employed as the Controller at Automation and Modular Components, Inc. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of the District Court in the case. Saroli argued that she was constructively discharged in response to her maternity leave and that the Corporation impermissibly interfered with her rights under the FMLA. The District Court initially dismissed on summary judgment Saroli's claims against her former employer finding that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether Saroli was constructively discharged and that Saroli's interference claims under the FMLA were not actionable absent a finding of constructive discharge. The argument was that the employer interfered with her rights under FMLA by failing to respond timely to her request to leave and failing to inform her of her eligibility to take 12 weeks (she was offered 6) and demanding medical certification for her return to work. The employer made the process of obtaining maternity leave exceedingly difficult; the day following Saroli's written request for leave, the employer informed her that his son had been hired as the manager of accounting a finance and that she would not be reporting to him, the employer failed to inform Saroli until the day she returned to work that she would need a doctor's note in order to be cleared to resume work and upon her return to work, Saroli found her computer account had not been reactivated and her work had been taken from her desk, preventing her from resuming her job tasks until late that afternoon. The employer met with Saroli upon her return to work and indicated his desire to have her resign (He laid out her options - the "staying" option was in an undetermined role, "probably" a demotion, but Shore refused to elaborate).