Yesterday, the 2014 White House Summit on Working Families was hosted by the Council on Women and Girls, the Department of Labor, and the Center for American Progress. Attendees included economists, business and labor leaders, elected officials, ordinary citizens, legislators and policymakers, the media, and advocates, including Richard R. Troxell of House the Homeless.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) is the co-author, with Maria Shriver, of A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, published earlier this year. One of its subjects is the income gap. The net worth of the average American family is slight. But in the highest 1%, the average family’s net worth is 288 times that much. To put it another way, 288 families could survive on the same amount of money that sustains one family in that lofty 1% bracket.
Not looking good
The book examines the national financial crisis from the viewpoint of American women, and the picture it reveals is dire. Women make up half the workforce. But when primary and co-breadwinners of families are identified, two-thirds of the time, it’s a woman. To put it another way, while occupying half of the jobs, women do considerably more than half of the family-supporting. And of course women, including many mothers of young children, and many who have served our country in the military, are increasingly found among the total number of people experiencing homelessness.
This is by no means Shriver’s first work in the field. In 2009, under CAP auspices, she published “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.” As president of House the Homeless, Richard R. Troxell has long appreciated Shriver’s passion and eloquence. Also, he has discussed in detail the need for a better Federal Minimum Wage formula with Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas’s 35th District, who was responsible for Richard’s being invited to the summit.
Preparation
In the months leading up to the White House Summit on Working Families, the groups involved reached out to ordinary Americans, asking for their stories and for ideas about what initiatives would be effective in creating a 21st century in which every person working a full-time job can afford rent, utilities, clothing, food, medical insurance, and maybe even send their kid to summer camp. The philosophy is the same simple but powerful idea once articulated by Werner Erhard: “The world doesn’t work unless it works for everyone.”
Working families, American businesses, and the American economy are always linked together throughout the literature describing the summit. To achieve the best possible outcome for all may require some resetting of workplace norms, such as unequal pay for the same work. People need to be able to get jobs, without discrimination or other barriers. They need a living wage and a chance to improve and achieve their full potential.
Several of the issues addressed by the summit are really aspects of one big issue: the fact that workers are complex human beings with loyalties, obligations, and duties outside of the employee role. They are not robots, but people with children to raise and/or elderly parents to care for. Because of those human characteristics, they need workplace flexibility to accommodate unorthodox schedules and emergencies. Sometimes they need paid leave to keep the family or themselves from falling apart. Of course, some conscientious businesses exist, as the CAP website describes:
They know policies that support women and families lead to more productive workers and help business attract and retain their best talent, all while improving their bottom line…. There are concrete steps we can take to give all workers the best chance to succeed at work and at home. These strategies must include making full use of the entire talent pool of workers so that our workplaces are fair, effective, and productive for employers and employees alike.
We can’t wait to see where the inspiration derived from this summit will lead. Meanwhile, please use the “Donate” button over on the right of this page to help defray the $1,051 cost of Richard’s journey to participate in it.
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Source: “The White House Summit on Working Families,” WorkingFamiliesSummit.org, undated
Source: “The Shriver Report Executive Summary,” AmericanProgress.org, 01/12/14
Source: “The White House Summit on Working Families,” WorkingFamiliesSummit.org, undated
Source: “The White House Summit on Working Families,” WorkingFamiliesSummit.org, undated
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