Guest Post from Amanda Reilly

One More Straw

Most parents would agree that simultaneously managing family responsibilities and paid work can be hard. Research in this area frequently focuses on the difficulties faced by middle class professional women (which is unsurprising since much of this research is carried out by middle class women who have a very personal stake in the issue). However, a recent joint report by the UC Hastings College of Law Work Life Law Center and the Center for American progress shines a light on how work family conflict affects poor and working class families. It makes for harrowing and heartbreaking reading. Click here to read the whole report http://www.worklifelaw.org/pubs/ThreeFacesofWork-FamilyConflict.pdf.

Here is one extract I found particularly upsetting: Kim Braithwaite was making progress. She was working two jobs to support her two children, 9-year old Justina and 1-year-old Justin. But on October 12, 2003, she faced a dilemma: her babysitter was late. Kim would be tardy for her shift at McDonald’s if she delayed and she worried that she would be fired. The sitter would arrive in a few minutes, Kim reasoned, and she left for work. The next she heard was from the police. Her children were found dead in her front room; her apartment had caught fire before the babysitter arrived. Kim was arrested for child neglect. Said a neighbor, “It’s hard when a single mother has two or three kids and has to work a lot. But I never hear her kids crying, never see her yelling at them. She is a good mom. ”'

Could such a tragedy occur in New Zealand? One would hope not but I suspect we would not have to look too hard to find families in New Zealand who, like those identified in the report ‘get few benefits from their employers to help manage work-life conflict and often hold jobs with inconsistent or unpredictable schedules that exacerbate these conflicts. Government policies to help these families are too often inadequate and underfunded, yet conservatives point to the problems these families have in balancing work and family as proof of their “irresponsibility.”’

There are no quick fixes or easy answers to the problem of helping families to manage work and family. However, the consequences of the recent proposal to amend the Holidays Act, to give employers the right to request a medical certificate if an employee is absent from work for a single day, strike me as likely to be particularly harsh on poor working families. For a well paid single person with reliable transportation having to go to a doctor for a medical certificate because your employer suspects you took the day off to go shopping is a minor inconvenience. But the same requirement to obtain a medical certificate could be a significant imposition on a struggling solo parent on a low wage with no car and a complex web of childcare arrangements to juggle. Keep in mind also that under s65 of the Holidays Act an employee may take sick leave if a person who depends on the employee for care is sick or injured. Anecdotally, many working parents of young children use up their statutory sick leave entitlements on caring for their children and soldier on at work if they themselves are ill. Any parent who has experienced what it is like to be up all night with a vomiting child and then had to drag themselves to work the next day ought to be able to empathize with the burdens that illness must impose on poor working families. These families deserve our respect and support. I have no doubt that many good employers are supportive and understanding of their employees with family responsibilities and that the proposed law change will make no difference to their treatment of their workforce. However, not all employers are good or sensitive and I fear that conferring the ability to compel employees to obtain medical certificates after one day of sick leave on employers could be one more straw for the backs of already struggling workers and families.

Strikes in Cyberspace: Guest Blog

Guest Blogger: Amanda Reilly

In September of 2007 Italian IBM workers went on strike. What was unusual about this event is that it was very widely publicized as a strike in Second Life; Second Life is the most well known of the virtual worlds which are synchronous computer networked worlds where people are represented as avatars.

A video detailing the sequence of events can be viewed here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dja5rlSGo0s

The short version is that as events transpired 1853 persons joined “the strike” from 30 different countries for 12 hours by logging onto Second Life as avatars. The IBM business island in Second Life was occupied by these “strikers” and shortly after that closed, and a meeting of IBM executives which was taking place in Second Life was suspended. Twenty days after this event the Chief Executive Office of IBM Italy resigned and a union agreement signed.

There is certainly no doubt that the “strike” was a creative, interesting attempt at utilising new media for purposes of publicizing and communication industrial action.
However, it would premature to suggest that this is the wave of the future as there have not been any subsequent “strikes” in Second Life. Still it is interesting to speculate on the legal and other implications of this event.

One question I have is whether it was really a strike in Second Life? My view is that it was not. A strike is generally understood as a work stoppage. The Italian IBM workers may have stopped work but they did not do so in Second Life. They stopped work in Italy where their physical bodies were located.

Perhaps the so-called strike in Second Life could be seen as akin to a picket? As reported, there some disruption to the affairs of IBM in Second Life when the IBM business island was closed and a meeting occurring there was disrupted by an invasion of avatars. This does raise a potentially problematic issue. Picketing is generally legal in a public space but arguably Second Life is a private space rather than a public space.

Importantly, even if the avatars who invaded the IBM Second Life Offices can be seen as akin to illegally trespassing picketers it would be very difficult to punish or prevent this in any significant way. Participation in this sort of activism is very low risk compared to an actual physical picket which has real potential for violent consequences for participants. The physical bodies of those represented by the invading avatars were safely at their computers dispersed over 30 different countries. In fact, they need not even have been at their computers since it is possible to install a programme to click a mouse button every few minutes which has the effect of keeping an avatar logged into Second Life without the need of any human intervention or observation.

I wonder if perhaps the action taken by the avatars in Second Life was, in fact, more akin to defacing a bill board? The purpose of IBM presence in Second Life is arguably for advertising and public relations purposes rather than it being a genuine place of business. While it’s true a meeting of IBM executives in Second Life was disrupted it seems likely that this could very easily have been reconvened away from Second Life by conference call.