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Workplace Flexibility 2010: The Next Step | ||||||||
By Ann W. Parks
When a campaign to explore the development of a comprehensive national policy on flexible jobs and careers was launched here in 2003, it was dubbed “Workplace Flexibility 2010.” With 2010 drawing to a close and the project slated to end next year, supporters gathered at Georgetown Law on November 30 to ask what lessons have been learned and where to go from here. Executive Director Katie Corrigan noted that in 2010 there is a better understanding of the problems facing working families, but many challenges remain. “We always knew that the hardest work would start now, when we were done,” she said. Professor Robin West, who opened Tuesday’s conference, thanked Professor Chai Feldblum — currently serving as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — for founding WF 2010. Feldblum moderated the day’s final panel, on making workplace flexibility a national priority. Other panels examined the problems inherent in applying a “one-size-fits-all” approach to the workforce and the health effects of chronic overextension. “People are exhausted, and they are fed up with having to choose between work and family,” said keynote speaker Kathleen Christensen of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a sponsor of the event and a funder of WF 2010. “Unless something significant changes, we’re going to see an awful lot of people collapsing before they reach the finish line.”
December 1, 2010 |
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