Bosses to be told to offer more part-time work for parents
October 24, 2009 by admin
Filed under Career News and Advice
Work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper wants firms to offer more part-time jobs for working parents. Photograph: Sarah Lee/Guardian
Employers will be expected to offer more part-time jobs for working parents under a major shift in government thinking on family life. The move is likely to provoke an outcry from business and accusations that ministers are not taking into account the financial burden of extending workers’ rights during a recession.
Yvette Cooper, the work and pensions secretary, wants firms that advertise full-time posts in jobcentres to consider opening them up to job sharers or part-time workers. However, the Observer understands senior ministers are also considering proposals to extend flexible working laws – which allow parents to ask only their current boss if they can reduce their hours – to future employers. That could permit a woman applying for a new job to ask first about changing her hours to fit school runs, for example.
Employers can refuse flexible working requests but critically must provide a rational business case for doing so.
Business secretary Lord Mandelson has already delayed a series of proposed new rights because of the recession. Katherine Rake, director of the National Family and Parenting Institute, welcomed the idea, adding that obstacles to flexible working were still largely in employers’ minds: “Part-time is still given mostly to existing employees, because people want to keep …
Read the original article at Guardian
