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Weekly Address: President Obama – Bringing our Workplace Policies into the 21st Century

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The President’s Weekly Address post is also the Weekend Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

 

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, the President previewed Monday’s first-ever White House Summit on Working Families where he will bring together businesses leaders and workers to discuss the challenges that working parents face every day and lift up solutions that are good for these families and American businesses. Many working families can’t afford basic needs like childcare or receive simple benefits such as paid family leave that are common in most countries around the world.

When hardworking Americans are forced to choose between work and family, America lags behind in a global economy.  To stay competitive and economically successful, America needs to bring our workplace policies into the 21st century.

Transcript: Weekly Address: Bringing our Workplace Policies into the 21st Century

Hi, everybody.  As President, my top priority is rebuilding an economy where everybody who works hard has the chance to get ahead.

That’s what I’ll spend some time talking about on Monday, at the White House Summit on Working Families. We’re bringing together business leaders and workers to talk about the challenges that working parents face every day, and how we can address them together.

Take paid family leave. Many jobs don’t offer adequate leave to care for a new baby or an ailing parent, so workers can’t afford to be there when their family needs them the most. That’s wrong. And it puts us way behind the times. Only three countries in the world report that they don’t offer paid maternity leave. Three. And the United States is one of them. It’s time to change that. A few states have acted on their own to give workers paid family leave, but this should be available to everyone, because all Americans should be able to afford to care for a family member in need.

Childcare is another challenge. Most working families I know can’t afford thousands a year for childcare, but often that’s what it costs. That leaves parents scrambling just to make sure their kids are safe while they’re at work – forget about giving them the high-quality early childhood education that helps kids succeed in life.

Then there’s the issue of flexibility – the ability to take a few hours off for a parent-teacher conference or to work from home when your kid is sick. Most workers want it, but not enough of them have it. What’s more, it not only makes workers happier – studies show that flexibility can make workers more productive and reduce worker turnover and absenteeism. That’s good for business.

At a time when women make up about half of America’s workforce, outdated workplace policies that make it harder for mothers to work hold our entire economy back. But these aren’t just problems for women.  Men also care about who’s watching their kids.  They’re rearranging their schedules to make it to soccer games and school plays.  Lots of sons help care for aging parents.  And plenty of fathers would love to be home for their new baby’s first weeks in the world.

In fact, in a new study, nearly half of all parents – women and men – report that they’ve said no to a job, not because they didn’t want it, but because it would be too hard on their families.  When that many talented, hard-working people are forced to choose between work and family, something’s wrong.  Other countries are making it easier for people to have both.  We should too, if we want American businesses to compete and win in the global economy.                                                                                      

Family leave. Childcare. Flexibility. These aren’t frills – they’re basic needs. They shouldn’t be bonuses – they should be the bottom line.



The good news is, some businesses are embracing family-friendly policies, because they know it’s key to attracting and retaining talented employees. And I’m going to keep highlighting the businesses that do. Because I take this personally. I take it personally as the son and grandson of some strong women who worked hard to support my sister and me. As the husband of a brilliant woman who struggled to balance work and raising our young ladies when my job often kept me away. And as the father of two beautiful girls, whom I want to be there for as much as I possibly can – and whom I hope will be able to have families and careers of their own one day.

We know from our history that our economy grows best from the middle-out; that our country does better when everybody participates; when everyone’s talents are put to use; when we all have a fair shot. That’s the America I believe in. That’s the America I’ll keep fighting for every day. Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Bolding added.

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8 comments

  1. JanF

    WorkingFamiliesSummit.org


    On June 23, 2014, the White House Council on Women and Girls, the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Center for American Progress (CAP) will host a Summit on Working Families to focus on creating a 21st century workplace that works for all Americans. Workplaces that make full use of the talented pool of American workers are essential – to a thriving and healthy economy, to enable businesses to stay competitive in today’s global economy, and to help all workers ensure the economic stability of their families. Too many working Americans – both women and men – are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet and respond to the competing demands of work and family. We will convene businesses, economists, labor leaders, policymakers, advocates, and ordinary citizens to discuss policy solutions that can make a real difference in the lives of working families and ensure America’s global competitiveness in the coming decades.

    President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Dr. Jill Biden will be part of the summit and it will be livestreamed.

  2. JanF

    President Obama Awards the Medal of Honor to Corporal William “Kyle” Carpenter

    At the White House this afternoon, President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to Corporal William “Kyle” Carpenter, a retired United States Marine. Corporal Carpenter received the medal for his courageous actions during combat operations against an armed enemy in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

    “Hand grenades are one of the most awful weapons of war,” the President said. “When it detonates, its fragments shoot out in every direction. And even at a distance, that spray of shrapnel can inflict devastating injuries on the human body. Up close, it’s almost certain death.”

    The President honored Kyle today because he “faced down that terrible explosive power, that unforgiving force, with his own body — willingly and deliberately — to protect a fellow Marine.” Kyle was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the lives of others.

  3. JanF

    Does anyone have a solution to this serious problem? It appears as if it is being politicized (surprise!! not) which is not going to make it easier to solve.

    From A Stream To A Flood: Migrant Kids Overwhelm U.S. Border Agents

    For a month, [16 year old Jorge] Romero traveled from El Salvador through Mexico to Texas, avoiding predatory police and gangs, warding off mosquitoes and hunger.

    Migrants like Romero are creating a humanitarian crisis for federal border authorities. Record numbers of Central American immigrants are crossing the Rio Grande into South Texas, overwhelming the Border Patrol’s limited holding facilities.[…]

    What to do with Jorge Romero and others like him has become a burden for the U.S. government. Because he’s underage and he’s from a noncontiguous country, he cannot be treated like an adult or promptly deported.

    More than 50,000 unaccompanied migrant kids have been detained in the past eight months – an almost 100 percent increase from the previous fiscal year.[…]

    Border Patrol stations are not set up to handle so many detainees, says Chris Cabrera, vice president of the local chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union.

    “We’re a short-term hold [facility]. We’re not looking to hold anything more than one to two days, preferably 12 hours,” says Cabrera. “And in some cases we’re hitting about seven, eight to 10 days holding some people.”

    ~

    U.S. To Open Immigrant Family Detention Centers In Response To Influx

    Citing a rise in the number of children and families attempting to immigrate into the Southwestern U.S. illegally, the Obama administration says it will use new detention facilities to house the families.

    The administration says it will boost enforcement efforts and speed up removal proceedings. […]

    To target rumors of a newly lax enforcement policy, the White House says it will “reinforce that recently arriving children and individuals are not eligible for programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, commonly called DACA, and earned citizenship provisions in comprehensive immigration reform currently under consideration in the Congress.”

    ~

    No, Obama Didn’t Create The Migrant Children Crisis

    The number of unaccompanied children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border has spiked 90 percent since last year. Republicans are responding to the humanitarian situation by making it the latest excuse to halt efforts on immigration reform. While some Republicans are lining their campaign wallets using the crisis, others are trying to blame the President Obama for not enforcing current immigration laws.

    House Republicans will hold a House Judiciary Committee hearing next week titled, “An Administration Made Disaster: The South Texas Border Surge of Unaccompanied Alien Minors” to drive home that point. In an op-ed published Thursday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that Obama’s “broader refusal to uphold our immigration laws [has] created a powerful incentive for children to cross into the United States illegally.” […]

    In fact, the current process of dealing with unaccompanied children from countries other than Mexico was set by the Bush administration, according to Dara Lind at Vox. Under the law, the Border Patrol agency is required to take in these children, screen and vaccinate them, then turn them over to the Department of Health of Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The ORR assigns children to shelters until the agency can identify sponsors and once children are placed with sponsors, their cases work their way through the immigration court. Earlier this month, Jonathan Ryan, an attorney with the immigration advocacy group RAICES, told ThinkProgress that the Bush administration “changed the treatment of how kids go through immigration court.” Ryan added that the law was a “recognition of the need to protect these kids and at the time, the need was the war that’s pushing kids out of Central America.”

  4. Diana in NoVa

    Now that I am a nanny-granny, it has been brought home to me afresh how terribly out of sync our workforce and school policies are with family life. Employers rule the world of work–the employees, without whom the company could not function–are treated with little or no consideration.

    When our children were small, my husband and I had to rely on a choppy, cobbled-together mishmash of child care arrangements. It was enough to turn one’s hair gray.

    The stupidity of the American school system, with its overlong summer vacation (for WHICH children to harvest WHAT crops?); the 3 p.m. dismissal bell (when parents have to work until 5 p.m. or later); the constant demand for parents to take part in school affairs (despite the hostility of employers toward anything not connected with “work”), all goes to create a completely stressful environment for parents and children.

    Other countries are kinder to families but then, other countries aren’t screwed over by wild-eyed, foaming-at-the mouth radical Rethugs.

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