Flexible working is a mixed blessing

It’s hard to be against the extension of ‘flexible working arrangements’ confirmed this week by the UK government. That’s why they’re called ‘flexible’ . . . it means you’d be counting yourself as rigidly inflexible if you objected. But it seems to me to be a mixed blessing all round.

For a start it is ‘helping’ working  parents (and mostly working women) on the cheap. Sure, any help is better than nothing. But what this means is that women now have the right to request that they get up really early, drop the kids off at school, go into work by 8.00, take a half hour lunch break, leave by 3.30, pick the kids up, go home, feed them, get everything ready for the next day, and collapse by 9.30.

I have not much sympathy with the wails of how expensive all this is going to be. In any case, employers have a right to refuse the request if it would be detrimental to their business to grant it.

What would help working women much more, of course, would be a lot pricier. How about some safe and reliable school buses to take kids to and from school (like what I’m observing here in the US). Or how about regular after-school, and half-term, clubs so that parents don’t have to rush to pick them up at 3.30 or 4.00.

But in truth, politically incorrect as it may sound, a bit of ‘inflexibility ‘ might not be a bad idea all round.

In those jobs where it’s feasible, the ‘9-5’ routine really has something to be said for it – indeed it was fought for as a way of avoiding exploitation. You only have to ask a university teacher to find out how (whatever its other advantages) flexi-time leads to over-time under another name.

Besides, there are two sides to this story. I don’t know how many working parents feel as frustrated as I do (no longer with school-aged kids, I confess) when they ring up an office in the only spare five minutes they have in their working day, to be told that the person they want works flexi-time and so isn’t there on Wednesday afternoon, Thursday before 11.15 or Friday from 3.30 etc etc…And no they wont answer their email either.

Another way that inflexibility might help all round is with a load of home services. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could actually get deliveries made to within even a two hour window, rather than the “best I can tell you, love, is that it will be sometime before 3.00” that you get now. Just how great would that be for working people, parents or not. How on earth most companies get away with assuming there's a woman at home to open up for for the gasman, plumber, Fedex-man, or whoever, I really dont know.

‘Flexibility’ is a bit like ‘modernisation’. Sounds nice, but sometimes conservative rigidity can be more radical.

Comments

[PL]

Tony, it's not just the built-in inefficiencies that have sent manufacturing jobs to the Third World. It's not even primarily them. The main factors have been the increased fluidity of capital, the fact that container shipping has become dirt cheap, and the fact that 3rd Worlders, bless their hearts, will work for peanuts. These won't prevail for ever. Piracy and the spread prosperity are already undermining the latter two.
As I'm sure you know, the science of Economics boils down to two axioms: "If I consume more than I produce, you must produce more than you consume" and "There ain't no Santy Claus".

[Liz]

Richard makes a good point but doesn't go far enough. People can have all sorts of responsibilities (e.g. looking after elderly parents/ children/ disabled partners) which require some flexibility and sometimes flexibility at short notice.

Employers have the choice whether to allow this flexibility or refuse it and potentially lose well qualified or experienced staff and go through the expensive costs of recruitment and training which can also be a downside for shareholders.

[Richard]

Dear Tony,
Clearly commercial enterprises have profit as their purpose. Likewise when I go to the shop, shopping is my purpose. It doesn't follow that I can kick old ladies and children out of my path as I do so, and then explain to the court "it's ok: my purpose was going shopping, and they were in my way!"
My own feeling is that commercial freedom for businesses is valuable because it promotes increase of wealth. But increase of wealth is a Good Thing only because of its instrumental value: it's a good thing where it makes people freer and gives more people what they want (e.g., people can ensure their own health and that of their families better, can live comfortably, can have more power over their own lives, etc.).
But wealth doesn't have absolute value. As such, societies should restrict the capacity of businesses to act for purely commercial reasons. Otherwise we'd still be sending children up chimneys and compelling builders to inhale asbestos all day...
If we want to be able to combine rearing families with working in a way which enables both parents to do both, we might consider that as one of the "real" goals (like being healthy and comfortable and powerful etc.): one of the reasons why it's better to be richer. If so, there will inevitably sometimes be a tension between this goal and gaining the prosperity needed to achieve it. Fortunately employers' interests will *sometimes* point in the same direction (e.g., a hospital which wants the best surgeons will shoot itself in the foot if it starts by eliminating all of those with children and working spouses or partners). But as Steve the Neighbour points out below, this applies to some kinds of work more than others: some employers for some jobs want the most skilled and capable, while others may really want the easiest to boss about and make fit the job's timetable.
So in the end we have to try to reconcile attention to means with attention to ends: sometimes we may risk killing the golden goose. But saying "commercial freedom first, right or wrong!" means forgetting ends altogether.
Allowing people to combine fulfilling family lives with fulfilling work lives as much as possible seems to me a good end, and I think most people want it. Often enlightened self-interest for everybody will point in the same direction: but I don't claim there will never be conflicting interests here...
I doubt whether it's really an option for European and US manufacturers to succeed by driving down wages and workers' rights to compete with the third world.
All best,
Richard

[Lidwina]

To Tony again
>For instance, if the kid runs a fever or is vomiting
This does not actually happen very often if your child is in normal health. We got through all the usual illnesses while I was part-time, so I managed. But you do need a network of helpful relations and neighbours.

Only once was I rung up at work - in the presence of customers watching an acceptance test - and I explained to my colleagues why I had to go, and all agreed that I had to, and off I went, and they continued competently without me. We have, after all, observed a (male) colleague drive home suddenly because his cat was injured...

The biggest problem was them having chickenpox and me having my appendix out, followed by peritonitis. My husband wisely packed them up and left them with Grandma till I came home.

When they had rubella he conveniently had it too, so got two weeks off anyway.

I have never used a public daycare facility, there weren't any in those days, and anyway I prefer the private version, in the household of someone with children of the same age. I always regarded the childminders as family, somehow.

It was quite hard, as a matter of fact, but I would do it again. But when they tell you at school you can have both, it's not true. You can just have a good quantity of each, but not all. The more of one, the less of the other.

[Tony Francis]

Richard: Your comment raises a question. Is the purpose of a business to provide a good or service in the most efficient manner to maximize profits for the shareholders, or is it to serve other social goals not related to profit margin? The problem comes when certain inefficiencies are built into the system for purposes of accommodation. Remember, it is the built-in inefficiencies in the western work force which have sent manufacturing jobs to the third world.

[Richard]

Tony's question seems to relate to parents in the workplace, rather than women in the workplace. In a family with two people working, there is no reason why only the woman should be bothered about children with fevers...
This need not come as news to anybody. My parents, both being employed, shared responsibilities for looking after myself and one sibling (I don't say it was easy).
The situation as I see it is that employers (and society at large) have to get used to the fact that people necessarily do have children from time to time. When they do so, in the usual way of things one of the parents is a woman, and the other is a man.
If employers can't cope with this, it is not evidence that women or working women are a problem!
All best,
Richard

[Tony Francis]

My mother told tales about post WW II working. Married women couldn't get jobs because they would take a job away from a worthy veteran. She worked at a radio station where women couldn't speak on the air because the public wouldn't like it. Things like that. Even though she had a degree in journalism, she quit working after I was born. Out of sheer boredom, she started a business she ran in the house. After a while, she became quite wealthy - not because she ever made very much money, but because she followed the simple maxim: "If you spend less than you make, you will always have money." And she was a good stock picker. Buy and hold the only way to go.

I am not opposed to women working. But I have to wonder just how they handle certain things. For instance, if the kid runs a fever or is vomiting, the day care center won't take them. Then what? Also, the daycare center is manned (or more likely woman-ed) with people who, at best are 20 years old and have a high school diploma. Is that what you want in the formative years of your child?

I delayed getting married until I had my education completed. By then I was in my late 20s. There were plenty of women with three kids and a tale of woe, and college girls thought I was an old man. By the time I was 30, I was too old to house break. Anyway, I wanted to keep going to school. That doesn't sit well with most women. Even my mother thought I was cracked when I went back to grad school in my late 30s. She thought it was a big waste of time. I didn't, and I still don't.

[Lidwina]

Dear Tony, I have to answer that one. At school they told us we could have it all, and I believed it. It was maybe true for teachers... But not in the real world.

I worked while my children were tiny. Maybe I missed out on something, I don't know. They seem quite normal, loving children. But my daughter learned traits from her childminder which I do not like. On the other hand, if I had been at home, bored rigid and forced to talk to toddlers all day, maybe I would not have been the same person.

When it comes to the career, well, German companies are very helpful, but still, I accept that my career has been on hold since I sprogged. But I do really enjoy the job I do and don't wish to change to management.
My man's career slowed too, for a while, but since the children left primary school he has lost interest and does overtime instead.

Meanwhile Mama picks them up from fire cadets, helps them learn Latin, buys them clothes, listens to their woes, because if I didn't, no-one else would. And deep down, I do very much like caring for my progeny.

If I had to do it all again, I would stay part-time for longer, but I wouldn't change anything else. My poor old mother brought up six of us while helping to run a farm. She never played with Lego until she got grandchildren. She never had time to help us learn Latin. We still managed to grow up.

[Tony Francis]

Dear Claire: In fact, my parents did have a child- me. And my mother quit her career and stayed home taking care of me. She didn't keep working and expect everyone else to pull the burden. My father worked at Boeing, sometimes not coming home for days at a time. My mother frequently lamented that he was married to Boeing and not her. Be that as it may, he retired as a chief engineer.

Your objection does raise a good point. The women's movement told us in the 1960s that "women could have it all." Is that true? Can women get married, have children, work a 9-5, five days a week, with nights and weekends off, and rise to the top of the corporate ladder? Or have they been sold a bill of goods which only makes them run from one stress-filled situation to another? These are legitimate questions.

[Claire]

Tony Francis, your parents also had cheel-drin. There's a saying about people in glass houses.

[Steve the neighbour]

Curious. The less well off the family, the less potential for offering flexible working because the work is more likely to be more process and schedule driven and less knowledge based.

Ultimately, the ability to work flexibly is more likely to be met by those less likely to want or need it.

Oh well, it's the stats that matter, after all.

[Michael Bulley]

To contrast how things are with how they should be, there should be crèches at the place of work of the infant's father and/or mother.

The answer to Tony Francis's question is ADANAC.

[Tony Francis]

I just finished the article on Detinue. Bracton reported a case where a woman brought an action in detinue because someone detained three of her pigs. In an amusing case from 1292, the judges got into a dust-up over whether an action in detinue could be brought against a widow, since married women could not enter into contracts. The judges couldn't come to an answer (from what we can now tell). Canada still has detinue, while the US and UK got rid of it. How backward is Canada?
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detinue

[Jane]

To paraphrase Tolstoy, "All mothers of small children are exhausted, but all working mothers are exhausted in their own way."

I followed the pattern accurately described by Mary, flexible working, and never had a minute to myself for years.

My college contemporary, who is now a GP, went through the gruelling junior hospital doctor system, which TF touches on. Her husband left her.

We discussed what we would advise our daughters to do. She, who has always worked full-time, and has a good career, said she would advise her daughter (present at these discussions) to give up work completely.

I said that I would advise part-time and flexible working. The reason being that you keep your hand in, although you will never reach the top echelons of your field.

[Tony Francis]

When I was in college the first time, back in the 1970s, Wichita State had a pair of chemistry professors from New York. Soon enough, they managed to produce a child. The mother of the child began keeping it in a playpen in her office. In those days, it was a kind of a "statement". After a time, mothers who also happened to be professors were doing this all over the campus. The place of higher learning was filled with squalling babies, upset over their lot of being caged in mom's office. Apparently, this didn't last, because babies are no longer penned in professor's offices. Presumably, they are lodged somewhere else.

On a similar vein, when I went to grad school, a female on the student council got condoms placed into candy machines. The thinking was that people in heat wouldn't know where to find them, hence look to the nearest candy machine. The university invited comments on the practice. One wrote: "Candy belongs in candy machines. Condoms belong in bathrooms. Gas stations figured this out years ago. What is wrong with the university?" It wasn't a trend that lasted, and soon enough the condoms were gone. In those days, I had no hankering for candy and no need for condoms. So it goes.

[anthony alcock]

How many children need to be driven to school ? My wife has always had the full time job, so I have spent a lot of time doing the other things that need to be done to keep the home ticking over. I used to escort Tom to nursery, and after that he made his own way to primary school, as he still does to secondary school. And that seems to be the case for most of his classmates. This is an urban scenario.
I don't know and don't want to know what goes in the countryside. I lived there once in a wretched little picturesque village. Never again.

[Lidwina]

In Germany:
In 1989 it was unheard-of that a woman might not want to become a house-cow after producing a baby. I got dim remarks like, "then what did you have a baby for?", or "you should have married someone richer". Infrastructure was non-existent. Still, I like my job and I was bored rigid at home, so after 6 months I found a childminder and came back part-time. My employer welcomed me with open arms. Flexitime is a miracle, and not just for parents of small children. I could only do this with the full support of my man, who assumed his share from the start. For baby no. 2 he took half of the parental leave, the second man ever to do this in his firm. He loved every minute; his colleagues were so envious.

These days my younger male colleagues find it quite normal to share parental leave with their wives. No-one complains, we work around it. Members of the nursing profession have managed to combine babies and shift-work for decades, after all.

So maybe the point is that we now have a choice. Parents can choose who brings up baby. Women are not obliged to choose low-paid jobs. You can work and have a minder, or you can manage on less money and stay at home. These are all valid options.

[Tony Francis]

An interesting medical article by Peter Frishauf predicting the end of peer reviewed medical journals as we know them (references deleted):

"Two predictions:
Within 5 years, most medical journals will be open-access. That means every journal will do what Medscape has done since day 1 in May 1995: provide access to trusted articles and data at no cost. Peer review as we know it will disappear. Rather than the secretive prepublication review process followed by most publishers today, including Medscape, most peer review will occur transparently, and after publication. How will this look?
Three years ago I predicted medical articles in the future will look a lot like Wikipedia, an encyclopedia with millions of user-created articles in 253 languages. Today Wikipedia is the most referenced repository of information on the Web. Any user can start an article, link it to related sources, and publish revisions with a click of the mouse. Anyone who reads an article can edit it."

"Wikipedia articles must be written with a neutral point of view -- NPOV: Anything not NPOV is quickly deleted. On Wikipedia, readers don't have to wade through thousands of articles written by a handful of authors. You read a single living article constantly updated, corrected, and improved by thousands."

"Each Wikipedia community adopts its own quality controls. In German-language Wikipedia, anyone can edit an article, but it is only visible to the world at large after a trusted group of Wikipedians say the contributions are good. Trust is gained by the number of contributions made that are not corrected. Changes are measured by a mathematical formula created by computer scientists and semantic intelligence experts. It's more objective than traditional peer review, which is often clubby, biased, and incomplete."

"Andrew Grove, the computer scientist who brought microprocessors to the masses at Intel Corporation, likens traditional peer-review systems to Middle Ages guilds. He calls for a 'cultural revolution' in publishing to reinvent peer review.
That revolution will emerge as a variant of Wikipedia. Medical publishing, peer review, research, patient care, and commerce will be transformed. And for the better."

"That's my opinion. I'm Peter Frishauf, founder of Medscape."

[Xjy]

Health, education, welfare, equal rights, unemployment etc are all interrelated problems that just can't be solved piecemeal. In countries where "reforms" were once introduced to improve certain aspects of all this, these aspects are being rolled back by counter-reforms.

It all depends on who wins by the changes. Cui bono? The rich (capitalists) or the poor (wage workers and their dependants, and the marginalized).

Reforms for the capitalists are driven through by steamrollering workers' protests (think Thatcher and the miners).

Reforms for the workers are driven through by the workers putting the fear of god into the capitalists, by refusing to work or by threatening to end their role and rule for ever.

It's all a question of class struggle, everywhere, each and every day. The relations of strength at any moment determine the results. The great benefit of running a state is the levers of coercion - the iron hand of the army and police, and the mailed gauntlet of the courts, lying and bigoted teachers, etc.

I think you all get the drift. Opulent handouts to the rich (zillions suddenly pouring out of "our" country's "poverty-stricken" arse) and callous gouging for the workers and poor. The problems Mary points out are general and everywhere (mutatis mutandis). And they need to be solved everywhere and generally.

With our present system, they won't be.

[E]

If getting up extra early is so inconvenient for working mothers, (and I'm not saying it isn't) why not give children a more humane (read: later) or flexible school schedule? Why are we rearranging the entire adult world just to make sure they are standing in the schoolyard at the crack of dawn every morning? In the states we seem to have "progressed" to the point where part-time non-jobs with no benefits are advertised as somehow "good for mothers" because it's possible to "be home when the kids get home."

[Tony Francis]

Frequently at government run hospitals, one can hear this: "I had to come in to the hospital last Tuesday night, so I am taking a flex day off today." Unfortunately, this is usually uttered by a female doctor. I was often tempted to say, "If you had to come into the hospital on Tuesday night at 11 PM and you were still working at 5 AM Wednesday morning, there is no time to go home, so you just start Wednesday's work early. That is medicine. If you don't like it, be a dermatologist or a secretary." But I didn't say it because it would have been impolitic and a waste of time. "Flex time" rules are playing havoc in medical education since residents are now staying home instead of being at the hospital. There is no point in arguing about it. It is just the way things are. When I was a resident, I had to spend three months on a neurosurgery rotation with over 100 inpatients and a constant stream of head and neck injuries. I stayed at the hospital all week, taking a brief respite on Sunday morning to go to church. But I never feared seeing a head or neck injury afterward. That sort of thing could not exist today.

I have worked on jury trials where the lawyers start prepping at 9 AM and are still going at 3 AM getting ready. Needless to say, they are males. Women are interested in shift work and want to quit by about 4:30 PM. I am not saying this is good or bad. It is just the way it is. I have often been the recipient of "well you aren't married, and we have cheel-drin we have to tend to." So it goes in the work force. It is one reason I like what I do now, and don't miss where I used to be.

[Imani]

Do UK schools not have after-school clubs, traditionally?

[Anna]

Until the Woman is no longer considered by society to be the primary carer, society is still going to undermine her role in the work place with terms such as 'flexible working arrangements'. This 'flexibility' is still going to be used to hide the fact that women are working a triple shift.

The idea that women have a choice to work or stay at home is a mythology; the widening pay gap between men and women means it makes economic sense for the woman to have a ‘flexible working arrangement’ and undermine her career. The fact that more women than men ask for ‘flexible working’ makes them less desirable employees and therefore more likely to earn less than their male equivalents, thus creating a vile cycle of female subordination in the workplace.

Ultimately it must be decided whether a woman is more responsible for the home and children than her male partner (in the context of heterosexual relationships). This ‘flexibility’ allows modern patriarchy to have a kindly face and suppress the issue. The male dominated political sphere and workplace is too afraid that conservative rigidity might leave them holding the baby.

[PL]

Yes; the old fraud that order is the enemy of freedom. Didn't Aristotle point out that the disorderly life was the life of slaves? Before the advent of cheap timepieces a job would start at "roughly" a certain time, and most of the workers had to hang around until everyone showed up. When every man had a watch you could start at a precise time and everyone was free until then. A "flexible life" sounds like a euphemism for a random life; in other words, a mess.

[Delboy]

Secure buses are a good idea but the ones I see are not safe and are severely overcrowded. As for after school clubs I would be interested to know who would staff these?