Paid work is a stiff aspect of daily life and an
unyielding
(顽固的) necessity for people who pay their own bills. But a new report financed by the Sloan Foundation
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an ambitious national campaign to promote flexible work arrangements. While the report is chock full of good ideas, it doesn"t directly
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that what some workers call "flexibility", others might call "
vulnerability
(易受影响) to pay cuts".
Flexible work arrangements range from part-time and part-year work to telecommuting and individually negotiated
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. Many highly educated women and men workers put a premium on flexibility to balance work and family
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Happily, their preferences are gradually
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an influence.
But the new
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to flexible work arrangements is converging with growing trend of cutting employee work hours in order to reduce costs.
The Sloan Foundation report insists that such arrangements should be
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, requested by employees rather than imposed by employers. This seems unrealistic. Flexibility, almost
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, goes both ways. A recent article in this paper points out that many workers are making do with less: The number of people working fewer than 35 hours a week because of slack business conditions has more than doubled in 12 months. Only 17 states allow workers to
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unemployment benefits to partially compensate for involuntary short time, and few workers are even aware that such programs exist.
It would be nice if all those professionals and managers who like the concept of short work would help
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other workers from its negative impact when imposed top down.