Prepared Statement of John S. Niles, Senior Fellow
Discovery Institute, Seattle
For the Congressional Roundtable on the Tenth Anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act
Capitol Hill, Washington, DC February 5, 2003
Good morning, my name is John Niles and I am a Senior Fellow at
Discovery Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank headquartered
in Seattle, Washington. Discovery Institute furthers research on
national and international issues, including the improvement of
America's productivity and quality of life. I appreciate the
participation by Chairman Gregg and Congresswoman Biggert in this
discussion of policy options for expanding workplace flexibility, and I
thank the Society for Human Resource Management and Verizon for
sponsoring this event.
I'm here to discuss telecommuting at today's tenth anniversary
celebration of the Family and Medical Leave Act, FMLA. Telecommuting
(or teleworking) is an optional work practice that applies to office
work. It was first conceived about 30 years ago as telecommunications
and computers began to blend together. I remember taking a semi-portable
suitcase-sized computer terminal to my apartment in 1969 to connect to a
university mainframe via telephone line. Since I no longer had to
travel each day to the University Computer Center to do computer work,
I was telecommuting.
Telecommuting is part of mobile, anywhere, anytime work. It is
increasingly common. For average office workers who would normally
commute to an office, telecommuting means working someplace else
besides the usual office -- most commonly at home, or sometimes a
different satellite office closer to home. Telecommuting is of course
facilitated by the ongoing growth in the capabilities of America's
telecommunications infrastructure and services, and even more
importantly, the growing know-how to use these capabilities.
Telecommuting is a voluntary practice agreed to by employers and their
employees, and its success in meeting needs of organizations and
workers is demonstrated by continuous growth over the past few decades.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports about 14 million
non-self-employed Americans work at home at least once a week, about 10
percent of the total U.S. work force. Telecommuting now increases year
by year, especially part-time telecommuting and partial-day
telecommuting. See attached chart.
Telecommuting can be initiated by either workers or their bosses, but
to do it requires mutual agreement and planning between worker and
employer, much like a successful application of the FMLA. Because
telecommuting means flexibility in the location of work, it can be
called flex-place in the same way that organizations allowing workers
flexibility in their hours of work is called flex-time. Flex-place and
flex-time go well
together.
When flex-place and flex-time are combined, there are additional
opportunities for time pressed working people to arrange their busy
lives for more productivity and satisfaction, both professionally while
on the job and personally, while off work.
Thus telecommuting -- like the FMLA -- enables workers to meet the
often competing demands of their jobs and their off-work personal life.
FMLA mandates America's larger employers to provide opportunities for a
worker to stay home in certain specially defined circumstances when a
family member needs care. Because FMLA establishes unpaid leave, some
workers and their organizations try if possible to blend in paid leave
with unpaid FMLA leave in order to lessen the financial impact. I also
understand that some employers feel burdened by the cost of temporary
replacement workers to cover for employees who are out on FMLA.
Telecommuting offers new opportunities for meeting these challenges and enhancing the benefits of the FMLA, in two ways:
First of all, there may be some circumstances where an employee working
at home could stay fully employed, require no FMLA leave, and be able
to meet some critical care needs of a family member, including care of
herself or himself. While full-time childcare or eldercare and focused
attention to a job are incompatible, there are many successful cases of
sporadic care requirements being intermixed with working at home.
Meeting the required balance between work demands and personal non-work
demands is a critical issue that requires comprehensive communication
and planning between telecommuting employees and their remote
supervisors. But with recognition and response to the
dynamics of managing time, attention, and focus, telecommuting and care of others can be successfully blended.
Second, there are an unlimited number of creative possibilities for
blending FMLA leave with paid, part-time telecommuting for temporary
periods that are compatible with FMLA requirements. For example, a
person in a critical organizational position may remain quite
productive to his or her organization by working just two hours per day
on a scheduled, uninterrupted basis, while a child or relative in those
two hours is under the temporary care of another person. The majority
of the day, the employee can be fully focused on non-work family
activities while on unpaid leave. Two hours paid per day, ten hours per
week, could make all the difference for both the employing organization
and for the worker in maintaining continuity of performance and partial
wages.
In conclusion, I have five recommendations for achieving better use of
telecommuting in the tool kit of flexible work practices that are
needed to support the Family and Medical Leave Act and the productivity
of America at the same time.
1. Ongoing measurement of telecommuting: First, the Federal Government
should insure that standardized, ongoing, unobtrusive monitoring and
measurement of telecommuting is carried out in the various ongoing
surveys of the U.S. Census Bureau. Measurement has been improving in
recent years, but to continue progress, the new American Community
Survey proposed by the Census Bureau needs to be funded and carried out.
2. Explore FMLA enhancement via telecommuting: Second, the full
potential of telecommuting under FMLA needs to be fully explored by
employers for lessons to be learned and for innovative techniques and
workable practices to be described and disseminated. Department of
Labor should support this research and educational effort. Integration
with FMLA could be worked by OPM and GSA into the Federal Government's
own telework programs now underway.
3. Remove Roadblocks to Telecommuting: Third, the potential for
telecommuting to make the FMLA easier to implement for each unique case
of personal need, and thus more attractive to both workers and
employers, may be occasionally blocked by legal technicalities. These
will reveal themselves as well-meaning people and organizations try to
keep America both productive and humanely caring in the face of life's
personal
challenges on the one hand, and the need for healthy, productive
organizations that serve people as customers and clients on the other.
If legal roadblocks are revealed to exist, then the state governments
and the U.S. Congress should strive to remove them so that
telecommuting and FMLA can be beneficially blended as needed.
4. Avoid Government Financial Incentives: If telecommuting has
sufficient benefit to organizations and employees, they will implement
it. Many businesses already do encourage telecommuting since they find
that it brings benefits. The primary motivation for telecommuting is
the cost savings, productivity, and flexibility benefits that both
employees and their employers attain, all without any incentive side
payments from government. Today's scattered examples of state
government tax credits and other financial incentives are characterized
by a lack of serious evaluation as to whether the incentives have
actually caused an elevated level of telecommuting.
Furthermore, because some organizations and employees really should not
telecommute for good reasons that should not be challenged, incentive
payments are distracting and distorting.
5. Avoid New Regulation of Telecommuting: Finally, it is also important
that government agencies resolve to avoid making new regulations for
telecommuting. As a voluntary practice established by mutual agreement
between employers and their employees, the details of telecommuting are
best worked out case by case with assistance from professional
associations, employee organizations, and a growing industry of
advisors. Government agencies should implement telecommuting for their
own willing employees as appropriate, thus providing leadership by
example. However, governments should not tell private organizations how
to do telecommuting. An evolving approach to telecommuting with a
minimal burden of regulations is best.
Taken as a whole, these recommendations say to government: understand,
measure, and appreciate what telecommuting can do for flexible,
family-friendly work practice, but don't love telecommuting to death
with unnecessary tax credits and regulatory standard setting.
Thank you very much. I look forward to answering your questions and participating in the discussion.
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