Rep. Sara Gelser

On Tuesday, May 7, 2013 the Oregon House of Representatives voted 32-28 to pass a domestic workers’ rights bill sponsored by Rep. Sara Gelser (D-16). The bill, which has now had a first hearing in the Senate, would require people who employ domestic workers to:

• pay overtime at 1.5 times the worker’s base salary for each hour worked in excess of 40 hours a week, or 44 hours a week if the domestic worker lives in the employer’s home.
• provide the worker 24 consecutive hours of rest each week. If the employee agrees to work on the rest day, the employer would need to pay overtime.
• provide the domestic worker with eight hours of uninterrupted sleep during each 24-hour period, if the worker lives in the employer’s home.
• provide the worker with three paid personal leave days off after one year of employment.

Read more about it in The Oregonian and hear what Rep. Gelser has to say about this bill and valuing women’s work generally (recorded at our May 8th Mother’s Day of Action):

“…the United States lags behind almost all other industrialized countries in providing the goods, services, and incentives that make it possible for women and men to be caregivers as well as breadwinners. What mothers need, as well as fathers, spouses, and the children of aging parents, is an entire national infrastructure of care, every bit as important as the physical infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, broadband, parks and public works.”

This great video from our national partner, Caring Across Generations, explains what we mean by “care”:

1. Help mothers to access paid time away from work when a baby is born or a kid is sick is critical to ensuring that mothers can stay employed.
2. Ensure that all families can access high-quality, affordable child care is a game-changer for moms.
3. Promote school and work calendars that are more in sync helps moms to be there for their kids when school is out, without falling behind and getting passed over for promotions at work.
4. Address the discrimination mothers face at work for their caregiving responsibilities and promoting equal pay for equal work are critical steps to narrowing economic gaps.
5. Make sure health insurance and retirement savings programs are affordable and accessible outside paid work makes it possible for mothers to handle time in and out of the paid workforce (many of us do some of both) without jeopardizing their family’s economic security in the short and long term.

Read her full Guest Opinion piece here.

This Mother’s Day, we’re partnering with Caring Across Generations, a national organization that is working to change the way America cares for seniors, supports people with disabilities, and values caregivers and in-home care workers.  Caring for family members is one of the tenets of our work, and the struggle to do it well while staying economically secure is our raison d’etre at Family Forward Oregon.

We’re glad to be part of the conversation about creating a care system in our country that is good for working women, our parents, mothers, people with disabilities and all working families.  It’s about relieving pressure on caregivers and ensuring quality care for those who need it.

Watch this short video that explains care and its importance to everyone in our families – it’s a reminder of what’s really important in life, we think:

A few messages from the film really resonated with us, and we wanted to share them with you.  Maybe you agree?

1. It’s easy to believe (or be sold) that in “this economy” we have to take whatever jobs we’re offered, but the truth is we’re actually collectively worse off if we do. Good jobs are worth fighting for.
2. Buying power is linked to wages, not cheap stuff.  When we argue that low-wage workers need low prices, we should be arguing that they actually need higher wages.
3. Walmart hurts small, local businesses that contribute more to the community – in part by keeping owners’ capital in the community.  This is especially apparent in small towns without the shoppers to sustain a Walmart and vibrant Main Street.
4. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  If your shirt/toaster/shoes/fan costs $4.99, someone else is paying for it: like the cashier, the stocker, the factory worker, or the environment.
5. Walmart fails at the workplace policies we value: they don’t pay living wages, they routinely underhire and overwork, they don’t let employees earn paid sick days, they offer unaffordable health care and encourage their employees to utilize public welfare programs, they require overtime work – but no overtime pay, they prevent union organizing, and they discriminate against women.  All of which lowers work standards across the community.
6. Where we shop matters. When our approach to shopping is driven solely by cost, we get what we pay for.  Instead, let’s seek out the often affordable alternatives that do better by their employees and the communities where they do business.  They’re out there, and it’s our job as community members – who tend to rise and fall together – to find them.

Screen the film at home  – with friends!
If you couldn’t join us on Sunday, you can still see the film!  And invite some friends to watch it with you.  It’s easy to host a home screening – just click here to order the DVD and use our discussion questions to guide the conversation.

Making Change with Walmart
Because Walmart’s impact on communities, people, and the environment is so great, there is an active campaign to change it for the better.  Check out the Making Change at Walmart campaign, which is now working locally in Oregon.

We hope that you enjoy it, share it, and RSVP for one of our great May events!

In this newsletter:

• Upcoming Events | How we’re celebrating Mother’s Day
• Apply by May 10th | Work-Flex Award for Oregon Employers!
• In Our Own Words | Equal Pay for Equal Work
• Required Reading | Book-of-the-Month & Must-read article on “the hell” of American day care
• Take Action | All Oregonians Need Paid Sick Time!

UPCOMING EVENTS

1 | Mother’s Day of Action | May 8th

Join us in Salem to talk with our state legislators about modernizing the public policies that affect Oregon mothers every day. You know they’re broken, we have solutions, and they need to hear both!

• What: Mother’s Day of Action
• When: Wednesday, May 8th | 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM
• Where: Oregon State Capitol | Salem
• Details & RSVP: Click here

The way we see it, the solutions are known, but the will to put them into place needs a serious nudge! From us. From you. From every Oregon parent and caregiver who suffers under our country’s outdated work & family policies that haven’t kept pace with the reality of today’s families. And what better reason than Mother’s Day to share our experiences and policy solutions with our state representatives?

2 | An Evening with Nancy Folbre | May 9th

In celebration of Mother’s Day, we invite you to join The Mother PAC for an evening with feminist economist Nancy Folbre.  

• What: Cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and the politics of caregiving
• When: Thursday, May 9th from 7 to 8:30 PM
• Where: The Hotel Monaco, Portland
• RSVP & Tickets: Click here 

Folbre is a rockstar feminist economist who focuses on economics and the family, non-market work and the economics of care. She has written books about the care economy in the United States (The Invisible Heart and Family Time: The Social Organization of Care), a topic of paramount importance to mothers who provide a lot of unpaid care as mothers that has important economic impacts on their lives and their families. She is currently an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

APPLY BY MAY 10TH | Work-Flex Award for Oregon Employers!

We know that creating a family-forward workplace takes courage and leadership.  That’s why we’re celebrating the Oregon employers who are operating flexibly and making work work for their employees.

Every year, the Family Forward Education Fund facilitates the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Excellence in Workplace Effectiveness and Flexibility. The Sloan Award is a prestigious national award program that recognizes employers who are successfully building flexible workplaces that really work for their employees.   What do we mean by flexibility?  Flexible workplace offer flexible hours, flexible places to work, part-time work options, and predictable work hours.

Apply by May 10th — just click here to get started today!

IN OUR OWN WORDS | EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

FFO staffers delivering $0.78 dollars to state legislators on Equal Pay Day. They may look bigger, but their value is a very real $0.22 smaller.

In honor of Equal Pay Day on April  9, 2013, FFO Executive Director Andrea Paluso authored a guest opinion piece in The Oregonian with Alice Bartelt of the League of Women’s Voters and Marcia Kelley of the Oregon chapter of American Association of University Women (AAUW). Equal Pay Day is the day each year when women in the U.S. finally earn what men did the prior year.  This year women caught up 99 days later.  Which is 99 days too many.  Read what we had to say about the importance of pay equity here.

REQUIRED READING!

Each month we select an article and a book that we think are so good we call them “required reading.”  We know all too well that parents rarely read books (especially when the kids are little!), which is why we also include a shorter article.  If you have the time, of course we recommend both!

Book of the Month | Red Families V. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creating of Culture

This book gets at the heart of why understanding family culture across our country – and within our own state – is such an important piece of moving our family policies forward. What does it really mean to be a “red” family or a “blue” family?  And does it matter?  The authors say yes, because in their minds, “family values are at the center of the contemporary culture wars” in America. Not only are red and blue families leading different lives, that difference has big impacts on our family laws, many of which are made at the state level. Grab a copy from Powell’s, your local independent bookstore, or the library. No time for books?  Catch this 5-minute NPR story instead

Don’t Miss This Article | The Hell of American Day Care

Quite a title, huh?  And it’s no exaggeration, either.  This powerful article not only documents a single tragedy, it delves into the history of day care in the United States to find out why we have the  dangerously disorganized and underfunded system we have, when  3 of 4 mothers work and about 40% are primary breadwinners.  The author suggests that if we are to achieve equality for women in the workplace, we must improve our childcare system so that it ensures safe, education places for kids and reliable, affordable places for mothers who need to work.  Read it at The New Republic.

LAST BUT DEFINITELY NOT LEAST: TAKE ACTION!

At FFO we work hard to convince our elected leaders to champion and vote for the policies we know Oregon families need. But it works best if they hear from you, too — especially if you make it personal!   The policy we need people to speak up about this month is paid sick days.  We helped get them for people working in Portland, but we think all Oregonians should earn paid sick time while they work.

Please take a moment to tell your state representative and senator that you support a statewide paid sick time law — and add a personal opening to really get heard.  They notice when people take that extra few minutes to personalize the message.  Just click here to send a message to Salem — and remember to add a line or two in your own words!

Feedback? Ideas for future newsletters?  Ping us at: lisa@familyforwardoregon.org.

In it, a new (partnered) mom wonders why she sees it as solely her responsibility to earn enough to afford child care?  This question is important not only because the sky-high cost of quality child care in America sends too many happily working mothers (and sometimes fathers) out of the workforce, but because it also gets at the deeper cultural question of how we – and those around us – see our value and obligations to the economy, to family, and to ourselves.  Author Jessica Grose writes,

“Ever since I realized I was unwittingly degrading my own work, I’ve been trying to unpack where these messages came from. Not from my husband. Not from my mother — she worked full time when I was small, and never had one iota of guilt about it. Not from my mom friends, who either work or are supportive of those who do. The only answer I can come up with is that I’ve somehow internalized the cultural message that says I am the one who should be primarily taking care of our child, and if I’m going to work, it’s up to me to pay for it.”

Read her full post here. Do you find yourself agreeing with her?  Or is it hard to understand why she might hold these thoughts? If you are in a partnered family, how do you see and direct incomes to childcare costs?