Modern Life Demands Flexible Work Schedules
Even as California’s economy (like the rest of the nation) shows strong vital signs in growth, consumer confidence, employment, productivity and investment, the next crisis already has appeared on the horizon.
As an employee of the largest developer of master-planned industrial centers in Los Angeles County, I am involved firsthand in business retention and attraction issues and see the direct impact of anti-competitive regulations. Right now, the storm brewing is over the eight-hour workday and the need to reform California’s overtime rules.
California is one of only three states (Alaska and to a lesser degree Nevada are the others) that require employers in certain industries to pay overtime to employees if work exceeds eight hours per day, even if the total hours worked in a week never exceed 40. What is wrong here? Nearly every state now bases wage laws on the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, a 59-year-old law that uses weekly rather than daily measures to guide work force options and flexibility.
In refusing to adopt federal standards, California has less flexibility in the kind of work scheduling that so many employees, many of whom are also parents, desperately need and want.
For example, a single working mom, the head of her household, gets a call from school to come pick up her sick child. Under California’s arcane and out-of-date system, the employee has a choice--she can take two hours off to pick him up, but she cannot work an extra two hours the next day to make up for the absence unless the employer can pay overtime.
The employer is then faced with a decision that is unfair to him and to the employee: either violate the daily overtime law by granting a flexible schedule so that the demands of parent and worker can be juggled, or pay overtime wages for the “made up” two hours even though the employee’s weekly time won’t add up to a full 40 hours. Neither the employer nor the employee benefits.
The benefits of a flexible work week--working four 10-hour days, for example, so that one can take Fridays off, or using the time off to tend to a sick child or parent--are obvious.
The benefits of workday flexibility were never more clearly demonstrated than during the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The governor suspended the state’s overtime laws to help Southern California residents deal with the emergency. Surprisingly, what happened as a result of the rules suspension did more to shake up the thinking of the business community than the actual earthquake. For instance, one of Los Angeles’ largest defense companies found that by granting employees added flexibility to take care of personal business, tend to clean-up efforts or comfort friends and family members, the company’s efficiency and productivity during this time period actually increased. The defense company employees forced to navigate a heavily damaged road and freeway system proved better able to keep up with their work responsibilities by either telecommuting or by utilizing newly flexible work schedules to avoid peak traffic flows.
Having flexibility in my position is key to allowing me the opportunity to be both a mom and a professional. I am thrilled to think of a workplace that will consider personal time and quality of life as important as company time and quality of job done. If a majority of employers also believe that they can live under the hourly federal mandates (as they do) instead of California’s quirky standards, how can we fail to come to agreement on this issue? In fact, both sides need to work “overtime” to make this shift in our work/life balance become reality.
Simply complying with the federal standards for salaried, nonexempt employees who base compensation on total hours worked per week rather than per day, will allow employers to accommodate individual scheduling needs without having to go through California Industrial Welfare Commission’s ponderous regulatory petition process. Instead of an idiosyncratic eight-hour rule that creates a “one-size-fits-all” problem in California workplaces, employers could respond to the real-life needs of today’s work force.
