{"id":51814,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/eeoc-recommends-employer-best-practices-to-promote-workfamily-balance.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"eeoc-recommends-employer-best-practices-to-promote-workfamily-balance","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/eeoc-recommends-employer-best-practices-to-promote-workfamily-balance.html","title":{"rendered":"EEOC Recommends Employer “Best Practices” to Promote WorkFamily Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Joanna<\/a><\/td>\n\n

EEOC Recommends Employer “Best Practices” to Promote Work\/Family Balance<\/h1><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n\n

By JOANNA L. GROSSMAN<\/h2>
<\/a><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

Tuesday, May 12, 2009<\/td>\n\n <\/tr>\n <\/table>\n\n

Recently, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency charged with implementing key federal civil rights laws, issued a “best practices” document<\/a> for employers on work\/family balance. This “technical assistance” document is designed not only to promote compliance with antidiscrimination laws that relate to or affect employees with caregiving responsibilities, but also to encourage employers to adopt policies that go beyond legal minimum requirements. <\/p>\n\n

This document is not binding on employers, yet it is notable for reflecting both the increasing challenges faced by employees with caregiving responsibilities, and the low likelihood of successfully addressing such problems through mere compliance with existing law. As Acting EEOC Chairman Stuart J. Ishimaru stated in a press release<\/a> accompanying the document, “Today we take another step forward, articulating not just the bare minimum required to avoid unlawful discrimination, but also thinking broadly about the ways in which family-friendly workplace policies can improve workers’ ability to balance caregiving responsibilities with work.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

Challenges for Employees with Caregiving Responsibilities<\/strong><\/p>\n

The notion of “caregivers” comprising a special class of employees is of relatively recent origin. What separates these employees descriptively from others is that they, in addition to doing paid work, are also engaged in significant caregiving outside of the workplace. Obviously, the biggest subcategory of caregivers is parents, but caregivers also include those engaged in the care of aging parents or relatives with disabilities. These caregiving responsibilities pose a variety of challenges that fall under the general “work\/life balance” heading. <\/p>\n

These caregiving responsibilities are not distributed evenly across the working population. As the EEOC’s best practices document notes, the care of children and other dependents is disproportionately provided by women, and even more disproportionately by women of color. Men’s role in parenting and other caregiving has increased, but is still vastly outweighed by women’s. At the same time, women’s workforce participation has dramatically increased, so that women account today for 46 percent of the workforce, and women’s earnings are increasingly important These trends may be further exacerbated by the recessionary economy, in which the vast majority of layoffs have fallen on men (who tend to work in hard-hit industries such as construction and investment banking) and, thus, women’s job security and earnings are even more important to family support. There is thus a significant overlap between women’s rights and caregivers’ rights. <\/p>\n

Although every employee faces different challenges in trying to balance work and family, there are common pitfalls for those who engage in both paid work and significant family caregiving. For many caregivers, inflexible workplace policies and insufficient access to leave present the biggest obstacles to their successful balancing of work and family responsibilities. To make matters worse, stereotyping about caregivers is prevalent: Women caregivers are often thought to be less committed to their paid work or to be likely to be less competent because of their actual or likely role in caregiving. Meanwhile, men are thought to be ill-suited for caregiving and thus not in need of parental leave or a flexible work schedule. Prevalent, too, are instances of employer animus or hostility against workers who reveal anything other than a single-minded and uninterrupted commitment to paid work.<\/p>\n

The Legal Treatment of “Caregivers”<\/strong><\/p>\n

The EEOC acknowledged caregiving employees as a group in 2007, when it issued its Enforcement Guidance: Unlawful Disparate Treatment of Workers with Caregiving Responsibilities<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/strong> This enforcement guidance \u2013 unlike the best practices document \u2013 is specifically tailored to explain, and assist in compliance with, existing law. Its express purpose was to “assist investigators, employees, and employers in assessing whether a particular employment decision affecting a caregiver might unlawfully discriminate on the basis of prohibited characteristics. . . .”<\/p>\n

No existing law creates a special, protected status for “caregivers.” Title VII, however, bans discrimination in the employment context on the basis of sex or pregnancy, and it is sometimes the case that “caregiver discrimination” is in fact sex- or pregnancy-based and thus unlawful. In addition, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibits “discrimination because of the disability of an individual with whom the worker has a relationship or association, such as a child, spouse, or parent.” The enforcement guidance identifies six circumstances in which discrimination against a caregiver may violate Title VII or the ADA.<\/p>\n

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