by Terry Neese

Our founding fathers believed in the American Dream, where all were given the opportunity to succeed through hard work.  Benjamin Franklin said that "energy and persistence conquer all things" Unfortunately, for many, our laws, that were originally crafted to protect the family and the work ethic, now prevent that principle being true today. 

Today, despite the evident and abundant blessings of liberty, America's labor laws aren't working well — for men or women. They simply don't reflect the needs of today's workers.

Beth Shulman, in her 2005 book, The Betrayal of Work, had some harsh words about today's reality: "For generations, Americans shared a tacit understanding that if you worked hard, a livable income and basic securities were to be yours. That promise has been broken and as a nation, we are living a lie."

Has the American dream become a lie?  That's harsh, but working hard is no longer enough to provide for you and your family.  Even those who work hard are having a hard time gaining basic security while they labor in the fields of the modern economy. If enough policymakers remember the principles behind our great country, and more important, the people composing it, proposals pending in Congress might, just might, be able to restore Benjamin Franklin's American dream.

For Americans, the value of work is unchanging. The satisfaction that comes from working hard and seeing a tangible result is at the center of our identities as humans.  Dignity, achievement, mutual benefit from a fair exchange in a free economy — these  needs of the American people never change. Our ability to meet those needs in the face of an ever diverse workforce unfortunately has changed dramatically since most of our labor laws were written in the 1930s.  Between 1950 and 2000, the labor force participation rate of women between 25 and 55 years of age more than doubled.  Today, more than 75 percent of these women are in the labor market.  Fewer than 12 percent of mothers with children under six were in the labor force in 1950.  Today, more than 60 percent are working. 

Today, those rigid labor laws function in ways that can deny the opportunity to attend a child's soccer game or take a parent to the doctor one week and make up the hours the following week. Women and men need the ability to bend schedules in order to care for aging parents or, increasingly, even an aging spouse.

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) has worked on such reforms for many years.  In "Leaving Women Behind," John Goodman, with Kimberley Strassel and  Celeste Colgan, acknowledged the needs of our changing workforce and began a push to reform labor laws. I continue to work with political leaders to promote the sensible reforms offered in the book. 

Our major economic institutions - including tax law, labor law, and employee benefits law, as well as Social Security, and retirement policies - reward families with a full-time worker and a stay-at-home spouse and punish every other arrangement. Today's employers and employees find it difficult to make any other arrangement, even though circumstances have changed.

In the Twenty-first Century economy, women and men need adaptable and flexible work schedules to allow the time and energy required to give adequate care to our children, and to support the quality of life our retired parents and loved ones need and deserve in the land of the free.  Our laws need to go back to when they allowed hard work to accomplish responsibilities both at work and at home.

One answer to the dilemma is compensatory time, better known to federal workers as "comp time." In 1995, a poll from the Employment Policy Foundation and Penn/Schoen Associates found that if they had the choice, three out of every four American workers would choose comp time instead of overtime wages. It's not surprising that support for the idea reaches 81 percent among working women, many of whom bear the primary responsibility for caregiving.

Many lawmakers have opposed making such changes in the private sector. But in 1978, Congress took an important and needed first step to change the rules to allow this flexibility for federal government workers. A recently proposed bill, H.R. 6025, would allow such flexibility and alternatives to the 40-hour work week for parents with children and caregivers for the elderly. It could shift the private sector toward greater use of compensatory time for employees who choose to take advantage of it.

There have been some recent rule changes to the overtime laws that applied to supervisory personnel. While welcome, these changes still exclude the private sector workers who most need the benefits comp time arrangements give to busy and stressed workers and their families.

America needs policies that work for people who work. American women - and all American workers — need flexibility, portability, and security in labor law and the provision of benefits.

Such reforms would be worth celebrating, in the grand tradition of our foremothers and forefathers. For a more perfect union, it's past time for comp time. 

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