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  Starting In Our Own Backyards
Ann Bookman (Routledge, 2004)
Lily
Huang, a scientist, occasionally takes a "sick day" to volunteer in her three-year-old's
childcare center, but her supervisor says "no" to a regular volunteer commitment.
Mike Hallowell, a production worker coaches his son’s Little League team,
but he can’t get to afternoon games since being promoted. Yet Helen Rafferty,
a middle manager, is able to volunteer in her children’s school now that
her company introduced an alternative work schedule. In Starting In Our Own Backyards,
Ann Bookman uses such stories to challenge our understanding of the current
structure of work, family time, and community involvement. For close to five years, Bookman followed the lives
of forty biotechnology workers and their families. She documents how their
inflexible schedules strain their family lives, and how their lack of job
security has propelled them to seek support outside of the workplace. She
discovered that these workers are building new forms of community to buffer
the ups and downs of the “new economy.” They are creating durable support
systems—via childcare centers, religious institutions, schools, neighborhood
groups, and parent-to-parent networks—countering the view that community
involvement is declining precipitously. Bookman argues that current debates about civic engagement
can only be resolved by understanding the new realities of work and family.
These changes demand that we expand social responsibility for families,
strengthen community institutions, and develop new models for combining paid
and unpaid work. And as she shows in her vivid analysis, employers, unions,
government, fa?isbn=0415935881&CFID=105911&CFTOKEN=42778032">
Lily
Huang, a scientist, occasionally takes a "sick day" to volunteer in her three-year-old's
childcare center, but her supervisor says "no" to a regular volunteer commitment.
Mike Hallowell, a production worker coaches his son’s Little League team,
but he can’t get to afternoon games since being promoted. Yet Helen Rafferty,
a middle manager, is able to volunteer in her children’s school now that
her company introduced an alternative work schedule. In Starting In Our Own Backyards,
Ann Bookman uses such stories to challenge our understanding of the current
structure of work, family time, and community involvement. For close to five years, Bookman followed the lives
of forty biotechnology workers and their families. She documents how their
inflexible schedules strain their family lives, and how their lack of job
security has propelled them to seek support outside of the workplace. She
discovered that these workers are building new forms of community to buffer
the ups and downs of the “new economy.” They are creating durable support
systems—via childcare centers, religious institutions, schools, neighborhood
groups, and parent-to-parent networks—countering the view that community
involvement is declining precipitously. Bookman argues that current debates about civic engagement
can only be resolved by understanding the new realities of work and family.
These changes demand that we expand social responsibility for families,
strengthen community institutions, and develop new models for combining paid
and unpaid work. And as she shows in her vivid analysis, employers, unions,
government, faith-based institutions, and community groups all have a role
to play in supporting working families and reinvigorating civil society.
 GO
TO PUBLISHER'S SITE FOR THIS BOOK
Beyond
Work-Family Balance: Advancing Gender Equity and Workplace
Performance. Rhona Rapoport, Lotte Bailyn,
Joyce K. Fletcher, and Bettye H. Pruitt, Jossey Bass,
2002.  Everyone
who struggles to meet the demands of work and personal-life
responsibilities knows how tough it is. This book shows
that it is the deeply engrained cultural separation
of work and personal life that has limited our ability
to deal effectively with this conflict. Based on work
with a dozen organiztions, the authors detail workplace
interventions that meet the goals of work-personal life
integration, equity, and effectiveness.
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TO PUBLISHER'S SITE FOR THIS BOOK
Working
in America: A Blueprint for the New Labor Market.
Paul Osterman, Thomas A. Kochan, Richard M. Locke, and
Michael J. Piore, MIT Press, 2001.  The
American labor market faces many deep-rooted problems,
including persistence of a large low-wage sector, worsening
inequality in earnings, employees' lack of voice in
the workplace, and the need of employers to maximize
flexibility if they are to survive in an increasingly
competitive market. The impetus for this book is the
absence of a serious national debate about these issues.
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TO PUBLISHER'S SITE FOR THIS BOOK
Care
and Equality: Inventing a New Family Politics.
Mona Harrington (Routledge, 2000)  Who
is now caring for America's children, for the elderly,
the sick, the disabled? According to Mona Harrington,
the traditional system of caregiving - until now almost
entirely dependent on the unpaid labor of women in the
home - is in a chaotic state of disrepair, as women,
in large numbers, move into the workplace. Harrington
issues an urgent call for new political conversations
about assigning responsibility for this important part
of the "general welfare" that the Constitution charges
us to promote. Care must now, Harrington argues, become
the joint responsibility of the family, the private
employer, and the various levels of government.
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TO PUBLISHER'S SITE FOR THIS BOOK
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"Labor-Management
Partnerships for Working Families," Read about the activities and accomplishments
of three labor-management partnerships .
Op Ed piece by MIT Workplace Center Co-Director, Thomas A. Kochan entitled, "A New Deal for Labor Day."
"Integrating
Work and Family: Life A Holistic Approach," recognizes the effect
of work-family pressures on society and explores the
low value
placed on care work.
"Work and Employment Relations: A Doctoral Student's View
" Reprinted from Perspectives on Work, Vol. 1, No. 2.
