Corporate Voices Attends Launch of Middle Class Task Force

Corporate Voices for Working Families was pleased to be invited to the White House launch of the Middle Class Task Force on Working Families this morning.

 Donna Klein and Tiffany Westover-Kernan attended, along with a group of a hundred individuals representing the House, Senate, administration, labor, and advocacy groups. 

While it was an honor to meet both President Obama and Vice President Biden, we were impressed with the candor of the formal remarks and the very casual management of this launch event.

Members of the Task Force include the Secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Commerce as well as the Director of the National Economic Council, Office of Management and Budget, Domestic Policy Council and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.

 The Task Force outlined five goals:

 - Expanding education and lifelong training opportunities

- Improving work and family balance

- Restoring labor standards, including workplace safety

- Helping to protect middle-class family incomes

- Protecting retirement security

 The first two goals are closely aligned with the work of Corporate Voices, and we hope to be able to continue the dialogue with Task Force members. The first meeting is February 27 in Philadelphia on the subject of Green Jobs: A Pathway to a Strong Middle Class.

 

Candace Parker and Work Life Balance

The following guest post was written by Ellen Galinsky, President and Founder, Families and Work Institute. Ellen is a member of the Board of Trustees of Corporate Voices for Working Families.

I was at the same time cheered and chagrined to read an article in the New York Times Sports Section last weekend (January 24) about WNBA star Candace Parker’s effort to balance career and family.

 I was pleased to read yet another example of a high achieving woman making choices about finding the right fit between parenting and professional life on her own terms. 

Over the past several months Americans have become familiar with a 40-something female candidate for Vice President who is the mother of five; a 30-something international film star and UN Goodwill Ambassador who is the mother of six; a newly appointed Senator from New York who is mother to two very young children; and now the 22-year old marquee star of the WNBA who is having a child in the early prime of her career.

In all cases, we see that women can be successful at work and can find their own way to manage their family responsibilities.

Yet I also felt a familiar pang of disappointment that when a women wrestles with these choices it makes for headlines and feature stories, whereas a man’s decision on work-life is a footnote, if mentioned at all. When will it stop being news, but rather business as usual, that women and men alike make hard choices to pursue their careers in conjunction with a family?

For those in the front office of the WNBA or Los Angeles Sparks who worry about the short-term challenge of losing Parker for several months, they might be heartened by lessons learned from the business world. 

Research conducted last year by our Institute and Catalyst shows that having the right fit between work and the rest of their lives was the third most important value to senior corporate leaders—both women and men. However, this study found that women were less likely than men to work in workplaces where their values were actually realized. When leaders worked in workplaces where they could manage their work and family life, they were much more likely to be engaged and to stay with their employers. 

The takeaway for an employer in professional sports: support your star employee in her (or his) life choice today and you have a much better chance of winning loyalty in the long term.  In the world of multi-million dollar athletes who often switch teams for the highest bidder, higher loyalty may pay very quantifiable dividends down the road.  Meanwhile, I look forward to the day when such every day support plays out in private offices, not the media, as do most personal employment issues.

 

 

Stimulus Plan and Education

Interesting article in The New York Times this morning about the stimulus plan that is working its way through Congress and the amount of money earmarked for education: “Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education.”

The plan targets $150 billion in federal spending over a two-year period, reaching programs from Head Start to college. Here’s from the article:

 The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.

Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government.

Bill Gates Looks at Education

For the first time, Bill Gates has written a letter that provides considerable insight and perspective on the initiatives, successes and goals of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The letter looks at a variety of issues — including education.

Here’s a segment of the letter written by Bill Gates about education:

These successes and failures have underscored the need to aim high and embrace change in America’s schools. Our goal as a nation should be to ensure that 80 percent of our students graduate from high school fully ready to attend college by 2025. This goal will probably be more difficult to achieve than anything else the foundation works on, because change comes so slowly and is so hard to measure. Unlike scientists developing a vaccine, it is hard to test with scientific certainty what works in schools. If one school’s students do better than another school’s, how do you determine the exact cause? But the difficulty of the problem does not make it any less important to solve. And as the successes show, some schools are making real progress.

Based on what the foundation has learned so far, we have refined our strategy. We will continue to invest in replicating the school models that worked the best. Almost all of these schools are charter schools. Many states have limits on charter schools, including giving them less funding than other schools. Educational innovation and overall improvement will go a lot faster if the charter school limits and funding rules are changed.

One of the key things these schools have done is help their teachers be more effective in the classroom. It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

Whenever I talk to teachers, it is clear that they want to be great, but they need better tools so they can measure their progress and keep improving. So our new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so much more effective than others and how best practices can be spread throughout the education system so that the average quality goes up. We will work with some of the best teachers to put their lectures online as a model for other teachers and as a resource for students.

Finally, our foundation has learned that graduating from high school is not enough anymore. To earn enough to raise a family, you need some kind of college degree, whether it’s a certificate or an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree. So last year we started making grants to help more students graduate from college. Our focus will be on helping improve community colleges and reducing the number of kids who start community college but don’t finish.

Our Corporate Voices website contains a number of reports and other information about workforce readiness and the link between helping our young people succeed on the job and throughout life and our nation’s economic prosperity.

Corporate Partners Among Fortune’s “Best Employers”

Nine Corporate Voices for Working Families corporate partner companies are featured among Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

Congratulations to the following corporate partners:

• Marriott International
• Goldman, Sachs & Co.
• Ernst & Young
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• KPMG
• Deloitte & Touche, LLP
• Bright Horizons Family Solutions
• Accenture
• Texas Instruments

The complete list of companies is available in the Feb. 2 issue of Fortune in print and online.

Obama’s Focus on Schools

President Obama in his inaugural speech Tuesday put the focus on schools and education. Here’s from a story in Education Week (by subscription only) by Alyson Klein:

President Barack Obama today cited the shortcomings of the nation’s schools as one part of the broader economic crisis and called on Americans to come together to tackle the country’s challenges in a spirit of public service and personal accountability.

“Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many,” Mr. Obama said in his inaugural address as the 44th president of the United States. “Everywhere we look, there is work to be done. …We will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.”

The president did not offer details, but the fact that schools made such an early appearance in the speech suggests that he sees education as a policy priority, said Paul Manna, a professor at the College of William and Mary who has studied the role of politics in education.

“It was headlined right at the beginning along with the economy and energy,” he said. Still, Mr. Manna acknowledged that the economy and health care, not the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, are pressing priorities for the new administration.

“What is required of us now,” President Obama told the nation, “is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

The issue of reforming and improving schools and education is of course very much a part of the needed emphasis on workforce readiness. Available on our Corporate Voices website is a copy of our comprehensive position paper, Strengthening America’s Economic Competitiveness: Public Policy Strategies to Improve Workforce Readiness.

President Obama Highlights Working Families in Inaugural Speech

President Obama put the spotlight on working families as part of his speech Tuesday. Here’s from the Sloan Work and Family Research Network’s Work and Family blog, written by Julie Schwartz Weber:

Barack Obama is now our 44th president of the United States. His thoughtful, sobering, and inspiring acceptance speech very much impressed me. However, as someone who studies and writes on work-family policy, the following language had particular punch:

  “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.”

Here’s part of the perspective on balancing work and family that Corporate Voices provided to President Obama’s transition team:

“Our government’s policies – many designed in the New Deal era – have not kept up with the new economy and the changing nature of people’s lives.” – 2008 Democratic National Platform

Working families – from all socio-economic classes – are the keystone of our nation’s economic prosperity and competitiveness. Yet as a nation we have failed all working families because public policy has not mirrored their needs or the world in which they now live and work.

 There is an imbalance that exists for all working families that allows people to fulfill their roles as employees, but not as parents. Consequently, when we speak of work life balance it is only an aspiration. We propose that President Obama take it from aspiration to actuality.

 Clearly, a new ethic of responsibility – of shared responsibility between the public and private sectors – is necessary to launch a bold, new vision for supporting the lives of all working families so that they can continue to drive the competitiveness of American businesses in the 21^st century.

Retaining Workers Over Age 55

CVS Caremark — a Corporate Voices partner company — and Steve Wing, the director of workforce initiatives for that company, are featured in an informative and timely article in Business Week online that addresses a big issue facing many businesses. How do you retain the experience and expertise of older employees at a time when you have to make painful staff reductions?

Here’s from the article, written by Joseph Weber:

Last fall, drugstore chain CVS Caremark (CVS) cut some 800 jobs in Northern California after acquiring Longs Drugs, a Walnut Creek (Calif.) pharmacy rival. Despite those cuts, the company continues to recruit baby boomers and other older workers to staff stores across the country. “We need their expertise,” says Stephen Wing, director of workforce initiatives at CVS Caremark in Woonsocket, R.I. “When you’re in your 50s and 60s, you’re in your prime.”

Companies nationwide are laying off workers by the tens of thousands. But many are trying to spare the post-55 set from the ax, a reversal of the top-down trends in past waves of layoffs. They’re being driven by legal concerns—since boomers are in a protected age group—and by a need to keep experienced hands in place to keep the companies running and positioned for an upturn. “Seniority matters,” says Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, director of the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. 

This story spotlights the challenge facing many businesses — large and small — concerning how they make jobs and opportunities available to younger workers while retaining baby boomers. For more background on this and other issues involving workforce readiness and at-risk young people go to the publications section of our Corporate Voices website.

Disconnected Youth Employer Tax Credit

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) said yesterday that the Disconnected Youth Employer Tax Credit (H.R. 7066) would be included in the economic recovery package to help create career paths for disconnected young people.

That represents a big success for Corporate Voices for Working Families. This tax credit represents one of our key legislative initiatives.

But more important, it represents an important step toward helping young people succeed on the job and throughout life. The current economic crisis has been particularly hard on young people — and this has important implications for our economic prosperity for years to come. 

An article in the Marquette Journal online provides some perspective.

According to the article: “The national teenage unemployment rate is 20 percent, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 13 percent in 2000. Using the Bureau’s definition of unemployment, this means that 20 percent of men and women age 16 to 19 who want a job cannot find one.”

Beyond the current economic downturn, here’s why this situation is important to American businesses and to the future of our economic competitiveness.

Not having a job as a teen adversely affects attitudes and abilities down the line, said Andrew Sum, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies and author of a study published this fall about the historically low figures of both summer and year-round teen unemployment.

“Their high levels of joblessness in their teen years will exacerbate their difficulties in transitioning to the career labor market in their late teens and early twenties,” Sum said. “(It will) reduce their future wage and earnings potential.”

The Disconnected Youth Employer Tax Credit is an important step in the right direction. It will allow employers to create career paths and job opportunities for young people today. And that will pay big dividends in the future as businesses look to hire workers to compete in the 21st century world economy.

For more alternative pathways for disconnected and at-risk youth, visit the publications section of our Corporate Voices website.

Bill to Make Child Care More Accessible and Affordable to Working Families

Corporate Voices for Working Families and the American Business Collaboration (ABC) support legislation introduced Tuesday that, if passed, would make child care more accessible and affordable to working families.

Congressman C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) and Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) joined with Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in a joint introduction of comprehensive child care legislation modeled on the pledge of President-elect Obama to bring relief to working families.

H.R. 460 and S. 210, the “Right Start Child Care and Education Act of 2009,” would increase the eligible expense ceiling for the Dependent Care Tax Credit (DCTC), while also adjusting the share of eligible expenses and modifying the qualifying income levels as to make it more generous for working families. It would also increase the cap on Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (DCFSA) to $7,500.

Donna Klein, President & Founder of Corporate Voices said:

“This is a much needed and overdue answer to help working families meet the escalating cost of child care. Congress should ensure that employees across the nation can afford quality care for their children and other dependents.”

By Allison Tomei