Public News Service notes the irony:

Over the weekend, working moms might have been treated to cards, flowers and even breakfast in bed. But today, life is back to normal – and for Washington women, that means earning less per hour on the job and receiving fewer workplace benefits than men.

“Washington’s Working Women 2010,” a new report by the Economic Opportunity Institute (EOI), indicates the economic progress of women in the Evergreen State has stalled. Its comparison of jobs and wages shows almost a $5-per-hour gap in median wages between women and men – largely because of the types of work they do.

However, report author Marilyn Watkins says, in the deep recession of the last two years, both sexes have been affected by businesses cutting hours and benefits.

A report from the Economic Opportunity Institute notes the gulf separating men’s and women’s earnings in Washington State has expanded over the past two decades. Women’s average monthly paychecks were just 63% of men’s in 2008, compared to 67% in 1990. And while benefits like paid sick days and paid family leave are critical for women, who are often the primary caregivers for children and elderly parents, 41% of Washington workers – 1.2 million people – can’t take a paid sick day at work.

While women have experienced fewer job losses since the start of the recession, inequality on payday has persisted – with men earning substantially higher wages than women in every industry in Washington. And lower wages lead to higher rates of poverty among women, especially for mothers with young children.

The full story from Public News Service is here; download Washington’s Working Women 2010 here.

When citizen delegates from Washington State converged in Washington DC to urge their representatives to take action on paid family leave and paid sick days, Selena Allen of Tacoma (whose story EOI has profiled before), and EOI Policy Director Marilyn Watkins were interviewed by NPR reporter Jennifer Ludden:

For millions of Americans, a major illness or family crisis means time off work with no pay. In recent years, several states have passed their own paid leave programs. Half a dozen more are trying but are largely stalled by the bad economy. Now, the Obama administration’s proposed budget aims to encourage states to push ahead.

Paid leave would help people like Selena Allen of Tacoma, Wash. When she found out she was pregnant with her second child, Allen started saving all her vacation and sick days. She hoarded away enough to take one month of maternity leave. Then her son was born a month and a half early. Allen, who worked at a nonprofit at the time, decided she simply couldn’t afford to take any more time off — time that would have been unpaid. She postponed her maternity leave and returned to work a painful four days after giving birth.

California enacted a paid family leave law in 2002, and New Jersey followed suit in 2008. And in 2007, Washington state made headlines when it passed a paid parental leave law. The law would provide new parents up to $250 a week for up to five weeks. Advocates wanted it to include other kinds of family leave, such as major illness, and still hope to broaden it eventually.

But the bigger dilemma was that lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to fund the program. Unlike California and New Jersey, Washington does not have an existing disability insurance program, so it had to create a funding mechanism from scratch. The state set up a task force to do that. Then, says task force member Marilyn Watkins, of the Economic Opportunity Institute, the recession hit.

“A new program, with a new source of funding, in the face of cutting so many other programs, was just not a feasible situation,” Watkins says. Washington state’s paid leave program has been put on hold until 2012, but Watkins hopes the federal government can rescue it sooner.

Read (or listen to) the full story here.

insisted she stay for another three hours — the kind of overtime Vickie had done many times in her 22 years with the company. When she explained why she couldn’t stay that day, she was shocked to find herself fired. “My family was like: ‘Huh? How could this happen?’ And it was almost like, ‘No, they had to fire her for something other than her kid,’” Underwood says.

As Joan Williams, head of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, put it, “There’s a lot of flexibility in those jobs, but it’s called quitting.” Some employers are adapting new models, however. For the complete broadcast, go to:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124710748&sc=emaf

NPR reporter Jennifer Ludden also reported on the growing demand for flexible work arrangements, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124611210, and a model Results Only workplace:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124705801

As our FV@W agenda says, all workers deserve predictability and a measure of control over their schedules — including an end to mandatory overtime. For more on Vickie’s story and on the agenda, read our report, Family Values at Work: It’s About Time! http://familyvaluesatwork.org/media.html

Why We Need a New Standard of Paid Sick Days

The following is a power point from the consortium that gives an overview of the need for and benefits of a new minimum standard of paid sick days.

To download the PowerPoint file, click here.

Expanding Family and Medical Leave

This consortium power point gives an overview of the need for and benefits of policies that makefamily and medical leave more accessible and affordable.

To download the PowerPoint file, click here.

Thinking Big on Valuing Families at Work: What We Need and How to Get It

Below is a presentation Ellen Bravo gave on February 11th at the Think Big/Think Forward conference in Washington, DC.  

To download the PowerPoint file, click here.