Work and Family Policies for a Changing Work Force (1991) / Chapter Skim
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6 New Family-Related Benefits
6 New Family-Related Benefits
Pages 114-154
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From page 114... ...
They are quite varied, ranging from flexible work schedules to new flexible benefits that can be tailored to individual family preferences. Table 6-1 shows the types of benefits offered today.
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From page 115... ...
Marriage Spouse benefits Spouse reloca- EAPs Marriage leaves Flexible benefits lion Spouse becomes Job search assis joint annuitant in lance for pension plan spouse Pregnancy Adoption benefits Prenatal Parental leaves and adoption Medical coverage for courses of absence prenatal and post- Information Maternity disability natal care from benefits leaves Coverage for delivery manager at hospital or Use of accumu birthing center lated sick Change in beneficiary leaves Coverage for Alternative work employee benefits schedules and job arrange ments Childrearing Medical and dental On-site child care Referrals Parental leaves coverage for Family day care Seminars Flexible work dependents School-age care Support groups hours Well-baby care Sick care Handbooks Use of accumu Dependent care as- Breastfeeding EAPs lated sick sistance plans on site leaves (DCAPs) Earned time-off Vouchers' discounts policies Life insurance for Sick leave for dependents family illness Divorce Garnisheeing wages Stepchildren fees coverage in medical EAPs and dental plans Divorced spouse and dependents can continue medical coverage for up to 36 months (COBRA)
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From page 116... ...
Another indicator of the new concerns is the frequent addition to employer and employee surveys of questions about new benefits (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1987; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1988b, 1989a)
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From page 117... ...
The wage replacement may be supplied by the employer or by some other source, such as employer insurance or a state fund. and unpaid leave, alternative work schedules and locations, family support services, and flexible benefit packages.
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From page 118... ...
An analysis of 1981-1985 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation found that almost 47 percent of employed women who had first births reported having some type of paid sick leave or unpaid maternity leave that included a job guarantee, compared with 16 percent in 1961-1965 (O'Connell, 1990~. Despite this increase, of the 54 percent without formal leave, 28 percent quit their jobs, 20 percent had informal unpaid leave but no job guarantee, 2 percent never stopped working, and 4 percent said they lost their job.
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From page 119... ...
This plan is separate from any sick leave, annual leave, vacation, personal leave, or short-term disability plan that the employee may take. bFlexible benefit plans, also known as flexible compensation and cafeteria plans, allow employees to choose between two or more benefits or benefit options, including cash, in determining their individual benefit packages.
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From page 120... ...
ND avg. Birth, adoption, or State employees Health insurance b foster child, child/parent/ continuous at spouse with serious employee's health condition expense NJ 12a Birth, adoption, 100+ for first year, Health insurance seriously ill child/ 75+ for second continuous spouse/parent and third years, 50+ for fourth year OK c Birth, adoption, terminally or critically ill child/dependent adult OR 12 State employees Birth, adoption 25+ employees Health coverage continuous
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From page 121... ...
, Private sector, Health coverage ill employee 10+ employees continuous WA 12a Birth, adoption, Private sector, Continuous benefits terminal illness 100+; local not required of child government 100+ employees WV 12 max. Birth, adoption, ill child/ spouse/parent State employees and county school board employees Health insurance continuous WI 6 max.
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From page 122... ...
One study found that, among 119 firms that offered unpaid leaves, only nine claimed that any fathers used them (Catalyst, 1986~. The reason that men do not use such leaves more frequently appears to be related to the often negative attitude of supervisors (reviewed in Chapter 3~.
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From page 123... ...
Available evidence suggests that having leaveeither paid or with a return job guarantee increases the likelihood of an early return to work following childbirth (O'Connell, 1990~. Low-income women, however, find it very difficult to utilize unpaid leave especially if critical benefits such as health insurance are discontinued.
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From page 124... ...
Governor Kean concluded that the New Jersey program is not a major hardship on employers and "fosters economic survival for low and middle income women who wish to have children" (Keen, 1988~. The data and the studies are far too fragmentary to reach firm conclusions about the impact that mandatory unpaid leave would have on employers and on labor markets.
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From page 125... ...
"Top management is often reluctant to implement changes; unions hesitate to negotiate new arrangements; supervisors find it difficult to manage workers on flexible schedules; and employees who cannot participate in certain arrangements such as flextime resent those who can" (Christensen, 1989:11~. Part-Time Work We focus on the issues of part-time work, flexible schedules, and alternative work locations because they are a means of accommodating employees with family responsibilities.
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From page 126... ...
The absence of health insurance benefits for these families is very significant. Evidence on the relationship between part-time work, lower wages, and lower benefits comes from such sources as employer survey data (e.g., Bureau of National Affairs, 1988a)
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From page 127... ...
It generally means variations in the usual rigidly scheduled workday. Experiments with flextime in the United States began in the 1970s, and by the 1980s about 13 percent of the full-time and 43 percent of the part-time labor force were on some type of flexible schedule (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1989a)
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From page 128... ...
1,202919236 47 SOURCE: Bureau of Labor Statistics (1988a:Table 1)
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From page 129... ...
New possibilities opened up by computer technology are largely responsible for recently revived interest, and modest growth seems likely (Christensen, 1989; Boris and Daniels, 1989; Bailyn, 1988, 1989~. About half of today's 18 million home-based workers are self-employed, including the two largest categories, farmers and family day care providers.
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From page 130... ...
Legal Constraints In addition to union and employer resistance to more flexible working arrangements, there is a complex set of federal, state, and local laws that have institutionalized the 35- to 40-hour week and the 7- to 8-hour day as full-time work, with important implications for benefit requirements and overtime payments. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
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From page 131... ...
Dependent Care Child care centers at or near the workplace are not new. Some work-site centers were established as early as the Civil War.
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From page 132... ...
The parents pay a fee and, after start-up, the centers are expected to cover all operating costs except for space, utilities, and maintenance. TABLE 6-6 Employer-Provided Child Care Services Type of Service Number On- or near-site child care center Hospitals Corporations Government Family day care, school-age child care, sick child care Referral services Discounts, vouchers Flexible benefits Total 1,077 777 200 100 50 ,000 so 2,00 4,177 SOURCE: Friedman and Gray (1989:Table 1)
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From page 133... ...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that, of those establishments that provide centers, 20 percent are free to employees, 40 percent require employees to pay part of the costs, and 40 percent require the full cost to be paid by employees (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1988, unpublished data)
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From page 134... ...
Resource and Referral Services The number of employers providing resource and referral services for child care and elder care is also small but is growing rapidly. Such services not only help employees locate care, but they also are believed to increase the supply of care available in the community.
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From page 135... ...
Counseling Some employers provide counseling and related services for child care and elder care, often through Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) , which are a development from alcoholism programs.
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From page 136... ...
Universities, where such rules were once pervasive, have virtually abolished them. Flexible Benefit Programs A small number of employers have developed flexible benefit packages, usually referred to as cafeteria plans.
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From page 137... ...
In any case, the plans do increase employee choice and are likely to be especially helpful to dual-earner families by alleviating the problem of duplicate benefits. The most recent addition to flexible benefit plans is the Dependent Care Assistance Plan (DCAP)
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From page 138... ...
, while employer surveys tend to categorize firms with 500 to 1,000 employees as medium, and very large firms as those with more than 5,000 employees (Wyatt Company, 1988~. However size is defined, the evidence suggests that larger firms are more likely than smaller ones to provide some family-oriented programs: certain types of leave, formal flextime, dependent care support services, and flexible benefit plans (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1989a; Trzcinski, 1989; Axel, 1985; Friedman, 1989b; Kamerman and Kahn, 1987; Wyatt Company, 1988~.
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From page 139... ...
Private industry offers more time and schedule alternatives, dependent care assistance plans, and flexible spending accounts. Within the private sector, service industries, particularly finance, insurance, and health care establishments, tend to provide more nonstandard hours and family-oriented programs than goods-producing industries; retail businesses in particular frequently offer part-time work (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1988a)
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From page 140... ...
A range of collective bargaining initiatives is shown in Table 6-7. As discussed earlier, unions have generally been opposed to part-time work, home-based work, and flexible schedules in large part because they are concerned about the potential of such options for the exploitation of workers.
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From page 143... ...
As discussed in Chapter 5, a number of businesses have recently reduced rather than increased health insurance benefits because of the rapid escalation in insurance premiums. In the aggregate, voluntary benefits
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From page 144... ...
and higher costs (22 percent) were the most often identified reasons for not adopting flexible benefit plans (Wyatt Company, 1988~.
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From page 145... ...
Efforts of federal and state governments to establish and promote programs to help families in general, and families in which all the adults are in the labor force in particular, are therefore noteworthy. Since the 1940s, federal and most state tax policies have subsidized families, especially traditional families.
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From page 146... ...
Only 3 percent of the dependent care tax credit goes to families in the bottom 30 percent of the income distribution. If the credit were refundable to those who work but do not earn enough to pay income taxes, the share going to the bottom 30 percent would increase to 17 percent (Barnes and Giannarelli, 1988~.
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From page 147... ...
He estimates the cost of providing all families an allowance of $2,000 per child under the age of 12 at $83 billion annually. The net costs to the federal government would be considerably less than this, however, since the allowance would replace the current personal income tax exemption for children, as well as programs such as AFDC, the Dependent Care Credit, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
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From page 148... ...
A family and medical leave act recently passed by Congress and subsequently vetoed by the President provided unpaid leavewith a job guarantee and continued health benefits for workers who need time off to care for newborn, newly adopted, or ill children and for seriously ill parents or spouses unable to care for themselves, and unpaid temporary leave for all workers for their own illnesses, including those that are pregnancy related. Employers with fewer than 50 employees were exempt.
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From page 149... ...
Alternative financing mechanisms suggested include a federally or state-managed insurance fund modeled on the New York and New Jersey short-term disability programs and employer-selected private insurance programs such as that required by Hawaii's disability law (Zigler and Frank, 1988~. The National Research Council's Panel on Child Care Policy, while recognizing problems for small employers, nonetheless recommends up to 1 year of unpaid leave with job guarantees and health benefits, but offers no recommendations on implementation.
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From page 150... ...
All rely on social insurance funding to spread the costs and avoid disproportionate burdens on individual employers. Critics agree that family leave is important but argue that it should be provided only on a voluntary basis (U.S.
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From page 151... ...
There is an additional 5 percent credit for a child under age 1 and a 6 percent credit for taxpayers purchasing qualified health insurance for their children. The effect is to raise the earnings of people in low-income households with children generally thought to deserve the highest priority among poor households and negative employment effects are expected to be minimal (Burkhauser and Finegan, 1989~.
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From page 152... ...
If employers offer health insurance, they may be subject to requirements about services, benefits, time periods, and people covered. More recently, however, states have been developing objective criteria to measure the social and financial impact of new mandates, mindful of the effects many of the requirements are likely to have on costs; Washington, Arizona, Oregon, and Pennsylvania have enacted some form of impact statement (Employee Benefit Notes, June 1987~.
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From page 153... ...
In addition to the standard benefits (discussed in Chapter 5) , the newer employer programs include several types of family leave, flexible schedules and locations, assistance with dependent care, and increased choice among benefits through flexible benefit programs.
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From page 154... ...
For example, there is some evidence that family leave policies increase women's labor force participation and reduce the need for expensive outof-home infant care. Both paid and unpaid leave have economic advantages for families.
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