Last weekend, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former Princeton professor and State Department official who now serves as the president and CEO of the New America Foundation, had an Op-Ed in the New York Times about the workplace. Because it was “designed for the ‘Mad Men’ era,” the American workplace, Slaughter argued, was broken. It had begun to “hemorrhage talent and hollow out our society”; a “culture change” equivalent to a “fundamental” shift was needed.
The piece was adapted from Slaughter’s forthcoming book, which itself is the product of a phenomenally popular essay she wrote in 2012. But while Slaughter may be the most prominent pundit on the workplace-culture beat, it’s rather obvious that her concerns are not hers alone. Paid leave, flexible scheduling, and other policies intended to help employees manage the “work/life balance” have been central to Hillary Clinton’s second presidential campaign. Even in the GOP, there’s at least nominal interest in reform.
And although it’s true that much of the discussion of workplace flexibility has concerned elites, it is not an exclusively upper-class issue. Far from it, in fact: According to a recent report from the office of New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, some 45 percent of 1,100 city workers said their jobs lacked flexible scheduling — and 58 percent saying they’d feel either “uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” bringing it up with their boss. And for those that did ask, negative repercussions (denied promotions, reduced hours, etc.) were not uncommon.