Democrats’ Blanket Rejection of Flextime Is Shortsighted
The long-running Sacramento debate over flextime came to mind as I skimmed Maria Shriver’s latest tome on women. Titled the Shriver Report, it’s about American working women “on the brink.” It’s 433 pages of slick paper, women’s essays and polling data — doorstop size — that cites many problems facing female workers and offers solutions.
Some solutions are politically problematic, such as a national requirement for paid sick leave. Others are no-brainers, such as equal pay for equal work — and flextime.
That caught my eye because no one has a more Democratic pedigree than Shriver, the niece of President John F. Kennedy and daughter of Sargent Shriver, architect of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Yet, ironically, it’s Democrats who keep killing flextime in Sacramento.
Full confession: My daughter co-edited the book and has worked with Shriver on previous projects. But it was another daughter, a nurse, who got me writing about flextime 20 years ago when she was a stressed single mom trying to juggle hospital and parent duties.
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