Not sure how I missed this, but David Leonhardt's most recent column addresses work/life balance--or the total lack thereof--in the financial services and consulting fields.  Leonhardt talks about this Harvard study, among others, that compares the family-friendliness of various elite fields and finds, surprisingly, that medicine is actually one of the most flexible professions, often allowing established practicioners to carve out an enjoyable family life while also having a satisfying career.  Finance and consulting, by contrast, allow for little to no flexibility in working hours or conditions, thus forcing people who want to spend more time with their children to drop out of the field entirely, or to take time off for which they are later penalized: taking time out from a financial services career means an average 41% pay disparity with former colleagues upon returning to work.

Nice to see this issue taken up in the Economy section of the Times; after all, the issue of whether workers have lives worth living, complete with thriving families, should be a central question in the cultural conversation.  And while the studies that Leonhardt references deal with elite, highly educated workers, they could be the beginning of a broader public discussion needs to address these issues and their implications for the average Janes and Joes of the workforce. 

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Marilyn Davidson, professor of work psychology at Manchester Business School, says her female undergraduates expect to earn--and think they deserve-- 25% less than their male counterparts.  

Davidson says women generally expect less than men, and don't speak up when they feel they deserve a raise the way men do, and that this gender difference carries on throughout a woman's career. 

The overall gender pay gap in Britain is 17%, but at senior-management levels, it's 25%, and the gender gap in executive bonuses is a whopping 50%.  But women are far more likely than men, say Davidson, to accept what pay has been offered, without questioning or asking for more. 

Davidson says that women place more emphasis than men on intrinsic job satisfaction, whereas men consider their pay to be the most important factor in whether their job is satisfying.  But it doesn't follow that women should earn less than men for performing the same job simply because money isn't their primary motivation.  It doesn't follow that women should earn less than men for any reason, whatsoever.  Any more than it would make sense that a person should earn less based on skin color or religion.   But it appears that women need to stop relying on legislation and regulation to ensure their equal rights, and get a little tougher and more assertive when negotiating their own pay packages.

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Mother Jones has an informative timeline of the history of the American worker's pension. 

My favorite bit:

2000: Fortune picks Enron as year's "best-managed" and "most innovative" company.

2001-2002: As Enron and Worldcom, etc., collapse, more than 68,000 laid-off workers lose their 401(k) savings, much of which execs had put in company stock.

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The Seminal has a nice piece on the disconnect between the hoopla over the new green economy and the ways in which green workers can expect to be treated by their employers.  The focus case here is that of Republic Windows and Doors of Chicago (of the famous employee sit-in when the factory closed its doors)and their new employer, Serious Materials.  While Serious recently reopened the Chicago factory, leaving its union agreement intact, they also reopened a shut factory in Pennsylvania whose union contracts they completely disregarded, apparently because they could get away with it in Pennsylvania but not in Chicago. 

This "test case" makes clear that the The Employee Free Choice Act is a necessary measure to ensure that America's workers are valued as much as her non-human natural resources in the growing green economy.

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Today marks the day that the average woman's pay in the US caught up with what the average man earned during calendar year 2008.

Jocelyn Samuels of the National Woman's Law Center gives the analysis in the linked AlterNet article.

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Your (wo)man in Washington is written by Valerie Young, Advocacy Coordinator for the National Association of Mothers' Centers and its netroots initiative, Mothers Ought To Have Equal Rights. 

In this post she addresses the gender-pay gap, saying that improved workplace policy will go a long way toward redressing the balance and paying women what they're worth.  But it isn't everything, and it won't go far enough: the unpaid contributions of women to the economy need to be acknowleged too:

"Women spend about one third of their time in paid work, and two thirds in family carework or community work, or other uncompensated labor. (Men, on the other hand, spend two thirds of their time in compensated work, and one third on non-compensated work.) No matter how lucrative we make paid work, we cannot close the gender gap by that method alone. At some point, the carework that women do, in disproportionate numbers to men, will have to be regarded as the essential activity for all other human endeavors that it is. Without bearing children, raising them, caring for sick parents, neighbors, spouses, organizing households, providing for anything and everything other than paid work -nothing else is possible. No workers, no producers, no consumers, nothing happens."

In other words, a cultural shift needs to take place, in which people aren't valued merely for their monetary contribution to the economy.

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An article in Forbes highlights a "dramatic reversal" in US workplace culture, in which female executives increasingly draw the line at checking email in the middle of the night and switch off their Blackberries at the weekend.  The article is part of a series on women in corporations, so it focuses on females and doesn't say whether this trend applies to men. 

The article does seem to indicate that this new "balance" applies only to very successful executives who have already "earned their stripes;" if you're a young woman struggling up the corporate ladder, you'll probably still have to "prove" yourself by being available 24/7. 

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Adam Cohen's Wednesday opinion piece in the IHT discusses the challenges--and opportunities for change--faced by the legal profession in the downturn, as more and more high-end firms are laying off lawyers. 

Cohen says now might be a good opportunity to reign in bloated compensation at top private firms, which would in turn reduce pressure on younger associates to work obscene hours, reduce the pay gap between public service and private practice, and reduce the onerous legal fees built into many industries' costs.  Furthermore it could help to reduce the high cost and huge resulting debt of a legal education, which forces many graduates away from public service into private practice. 

Cohen concludes: "The past few decades of prosperity made a lot of lawyers wealthy, but they were not always good for the profession. Law school deans, bar association leaders and firm managers should follow Rahm Emanuel’s advice about never allowing a crisis to go to waste and start planning for what comes next."

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British dads may soon get much more paternity leave than they currently enjoy; if so British mums might feel better about going back to work. 

Guardian: "Radical reforms to maternity leave legislation, which would allow fathers to take more paid time off, will be proposed today by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

Concerned that the extension of maternity leave from six to nine and soon to 12 months has "entrenched the assumption that women do the caring and pay the career penalty", the EHRC will set out a series of measures to redress the gender imbalance by encouraging fathers to become more involved in caring for their children.

"New parental rights introduced over the past decade are well intentioned but entrench the current unequal division of labour and caring between the sexes and work against gender equality," the EHRC's Working Better report says.

Research conducted by the commission suggests that families no longer have firm preconceptions about men as breadwinners and women as carers, but notes that legislation is lagging behind this shift."

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Back in 2000, a group of skilled meatcutters who worked for a Texas Wal-Mart decided to organize. 

Their union never became reality, because Wal-Mart's response was, "there's no need for you to organize because we no longer need your services."  Jonathan Tasini: "I remember being told this story a number of years ago. In fact, it gets even worse: after eliminating the meat cutters position in that one store, The Beast proceeded to close down meat-cutting departments in whole southern region to make sure the "virus" of unionism could not spread. Talk about justice delayed is justice denied: one person out of that 12-member group has died since the vote, and only one remains at the store."

Now United Food and Commercial Workers hope to make this case an example of how EFCA could help skilled workers organize for better conditions without fear of losing their jobs.

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