Family-Friendly WORK ARRANGEMENTS: A Win–Win Situation

Abstract

In recent years, labor unions on both sides of the Atlantic have widened their bargaining agenda to include—or even emphasize— concerns that are of increasing importance to the majority of the workforce: family-friendly work arrangements and work-life balance. Have they been successful, and could this success be used as a recruitment tool to halt the trend in declining union membership by bringing in new blood from sectors traditionally seen as “hard to organize”? The answer is yes. In fact, research conducted as part of the Leverhulme trade unions project has shown that unions can negotiate family-friendly working not at the expense of employers’ profits but in a real win–win fashion.There is considerable case study evidence that says that family-friendly work environments benefit bosses. According to a recent U.S. Labor Department report on the effects of the Family and Medical Leave Act, more than eight in ten employers said that providing leave resulted in either positive or no noticeable effect on productivity, profits, or enterprise growth. In the United Kingdom, websites run by family- friendly employers report similar benefits. The question has been whether these findings can stand up to more rigorous testing.We are lucky in the UK to have a nationally representative data set of the employment characteristics of some two thousand workplaces, the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS). It enables us to test the impact of familyfriendly working while controlling for factors such as workplace size, sector (public versus private), the extent of product- or labor-market competition, and so on. The evidence suggests that family-friendly working pays off and that UK workplaces are far more likely to offer this type of flexible working if a union is recognized at the workplace.