Striking a balance between work and family

The relationship between work and family receives a lot of media attention. The pertinent question in the ongoing debate about this issue is whether our society has adapted to the changes that have transformed the dynamics and values of the family.

To many people work means being physically away from home for long hours of the day so that life at work and the family may be viewed as two separate experiences.

This view may not be totally close to reality because there seems to be a well founded belief that home and work actually sustain each other.

Indeed it has become widely acknowledged that an ideal work environment is the one that facilitates family life in its diverse forms.

The Employment and Industrial Relations Act, which came into force this year, includes a number of family-friendly measures aimed at allowing workers to remain in gainful employment without compromising their family responsibilities.

The promotion of family-friendly work environment tries to reconcile work and family life by making working arrangements that suit, or at least cause the least amount of disruption to, family life.

The fragility of the family is often seen as being one of the social ills of today's society as an increasing rate of marital breakdowns has become part of the reality of modernity. Various factors have been identified to explain this fragility of the family such as the trends of secularisation and materialism that have become a feature of modern society.

The increasing number of the dual worker family is also often pointed out, albeit sometimes implicitly, as a major cause for the high rate of marital breakdowns.

The double career family where both spouses are career orientated adds to the kaleidoscope of family types which may change the patterns of inter-relationships within the family. Building a career may go on towards the late 20s and sometimes even in the late 30s - the years when families normally start having children.

These factors may, of course, have a bearing on the stability of the family. What however is missing in this line of argument is the high value people are giving to marriage.

Marriage is no longer perceived as a rite of passage to conform to the norms often associated with the onset of adulthood. Being based on romantic love, marriage is seen as an event leading to a heightened sense of gratification and self-fulfilment.

The higher demands and expectations inherent in this value to marriage may give rise to stress and tension within the family. It is a paradox that the family seems to be fragile at a time when it is more home-centred and its relationships based on more genuine love.

A family-friendly work environment may help ease this tension by adding to the home centredness of the family. If family-friendly work arrangements were to increase the participation rate of people in the labour market, it may also mitigate some of the adverse effects of the demographic deficit which every government in Europe (including Malta) has to grapple with.

The lower fertility rate and higher life expectancy registered for the past two or three decades have drastically decreased the local working population in relation to the non-working population.

In other words, the dependency ratio of the population is getting higher. The situation is likely to become more acute once those born during the baby boom of the 1940s reach retirement age in a few years time. Calling up the reserve army of labour to boost the rate of gainfully employed people may be part of the solution.

Many of these are women who for one reason or another have been confined to domestic work. They may now be offered opportunities to participate in the labour market as gainfully employed people. The expansion of the service industry has created many job opportunities that do not call for physical and muscular work so that there is more work available which is often presented as being tailor-made for women.

In spite of its shrinkage, the manufacturing sector, which has always shown a favourable disposition towards female recruitment, is still and very likely will remain one of the mainstays in our economy.

There is, however, another positive economic aspect to the development of the dual worker family besides adding to the proportion of those who are active in the labour market.

A two-worker family that earns more than Lm10,000, which is quite possible and likely, does not qualify for children's allowance. So an increase in the dual worker family would have the double advantage of having more people contributing to the national insurance scheme and, at the same time, by reducing allowances save money from the government coffers which could be directed towards other causes.

The dual worker family may therefore fit into the activation policy initiated by the government to push people receiving state aid to work. Thus, a policy of family-friendly work environment may be based on the practical need of economic imperatives rather than idealism and humanitarian principles.

The policy of Tony Blair in the UK urging parents of lone parent families to join the labour force compensating them with tax credits on expenses incurred for child care is a good example of how the state is trying to replace welfare with workfare.

Of course, we would be deluding ourselves if we were to believe that family-friendly work arrangements would solve the tensions within the family.

A sick child or an elderly relative who needs constant help would still cause tension to the working spouses especially when any contingency plan to solve this tension may be incompatible to the constraints of working time arrangement.

The provision of maternity and parental leave in the new Employment and Industrial Relations Act is a very important instrument for parents to adjust their working life to parenthood. What however is needed to help spouses cope with such an exigency as when a child or an elderly relative is ill is flexible working hours.

Child care centres and respite homes which are affordable, accessible and of high quality may also go a long way in the development of new ways to organise relationship between paid work and parenthood.

A word of caution would not be amiss here. Family-friendly arrangements should not be a device to widen the discrepancies between different categories of workers. This may occur because while the public sector or entities, partly owned or financed by the state, may go beyond the legal minimum in making family-friendly work arrangements for their employees, implementation in other sectors may be patchy and with very little extra family leave and child care.

The employers and the trade unions representing these employees should bear in mind that workers who manage to balance their work with their family obligations manifest a high level of job satisfaction and tend to be more loyal to the firm.

Employers who are concerned with the lack of loyalty of their employees and the high labour turnover among their workforce may find that family-friendly work arrangements may not be such a high cost as the accounts book may suggest.

Any additional cost incurred by family-friendly work arrangements may be offset by gains in terms of reduced absenteeism and increased motivation.

Moreover, flexibility at work that suits workers' preferences would reduce labour turnover among employees encouraging both employers and employees to invest more time and energy in firm specific skill training.

On the other hand, trade unions may contribute towards greater equity and fairness in the labour market by ensuring that friendly work arrangements are available to all workers and not targeted at a privileged section of the workforce. This would add to their credibility among the public.

Mr Rizzo is a member of the academic staff of the Workers' Participation Development Centre at the University of Malta and at present is responsible for an ongoing research project on working time run by the centre with the full support of the MEA.