Sounds pretty good and it would be nice to see more policies that focus on this. The recession has scaled back some of the government plans but there's always going to be a good excuse to postpone changes. Good for them for pushing this now. Finding a new balance between work and home is an interesting subject and something that I tend to think a lot more of today than I did ten years ago. Would anyone really not like more flexibility in the workplace?
Employers will be expected to offer more part-time jobs for working parents under a major shift in government thinking on family life. The move is likely to provoke an outcry from business and accusations that ministers are not taking into account the financial burden of extending workers' rights during a recession.
Yvette Cooper, the work and pensions secretary, wants firms that advertise full-time posts in jobcentres to consider opening them up to job sharers or part-time workers. However, the Observer understands senior ministers are also considering proposals to extend flexible working laws - which allow parents to ask only their current boss if they can reduce their hours - to future employers. That could permit a woman applying for a new job to ask first about changing her hours to fit school runs, for example.
Waiting for the "family values" Republicans to come up with something like this? Don't hold your breath.
Another post from Chris, this time on the Danes and vacations.
As Americans we often scoff at the long holidays in Europe and some even say workers over this way are lazy. (I plead guilty to making the same argument years ago.) Sounds like jealousy to me because despite the work-life balance and despite the long vacations, the work gets done and the companies prosper. People are more productive when they can relax and come back reinvigorated. The countries with more vacation days are not doing much worse than the US during this recession and many cases, doing better. Could more vacation really be so bad?
In my own case, I'm sort of semi-retired by necessity: with years of experience in arts administration (in all areas, including a major museum, a major auction house, and a commercial dealer) at high levels and a very solid reputation in my field, I couldn't get a job. So I work three days a week as a receptionist, and you know what? I love it. I have time to pursue my own interests, I don't make a lot of money but I make enough, and I have a much better sense of what's necessary for my well-being and what's just foolishness.
(My favorite story was the HR assistant who kept bugging me to use my vacation time or I was going to lose it. At the time my schedule was such that I already had two two-day weekends every week, and I finally asked her what I was supposed to be taking a vacation from?)
I see stories like these, and then I see stories about the Catholic Diocese of Portland forking over more than a quarter-million dollars to strip rights from gay and lesbian couples (total contributions from the Catholic Church and its members are well over half a million), and the "Christians" in the news freaking out because Congress finally passed an amendment to standing hate-crimes legislation to include sexual orientation and gender identity, and I have to wonder just who has family values most to heart. Especially when I read a story like this one from Timothy Beauchamp:
Fortunately, there are churches, like the two little open and affirming to the LGBT community UCC churches I attend in the Tulsa area, who focus on things like feeding the homeless, local HIV/AIDS ministries and the "Food 4 Kids Backpack" program where we deliver backpacks of food to local elementary schools so children who are "food insecure" do not go hungry. Whatever the reason, some kids are not being fed properly by their parents. I don't care why they aren't being fed, but I feel like one hungry child in the United States is ONE CHILD TOO MANY!
The Catholic Church, it seems, feels that one child who finds a loving, supportive, secure home with same-sex parents is one child too many.
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