Blog #35: EEOC

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) submitted a document titled “Best Practices”. This document is not a binding document, but was writing to get business to go above and beyond the minimum requirements to promote work/family balance. The EEOC understands that there are so many more necessities for care giving that is required of employees. Most people only think of parents as being childcare providers. They tend to forget that the elderly need to be cared for and that falls to their children most of the time. There are also family members who are suffering from medical conditions, some of which are terminal. The document reminds employers that these caregivers not only work for pay, but when they clock out they are going home to work unpaid hours. I also like how the document from the EEOC mentions the recession and how providing for the family has fallen to a lot of the women because their husbands have been laid off. Now we have women working the double shift and only making ¾ the pay that their male counterparts are making. By making the work environment more family friendly will help to alleviates so much of the stress that caregivers are under. English also refers to the benefits that can be had by companies and firms that adopt more family friendly policies. To give that extra support their company will benefit in overall productivity and they will both earn more money and save money on lowering the turn-over rate. Both English and the EEOC document talk about how most of the care-giving duties fall to women. The EEOC goes further than English did and also extended that colored women do more of the care-giving then their white women counterparts. EEOC document stresses the importance that by making more family-friendly work environments it will improve the care-givers ability to “balance work and life”, which is exactly what English has been stressing throughout her book.