Unions have always been about bettering their members' lives. Higher pay, shorter work weeks, paid vacations, health insurance and overtime pay are just some of the improvements unions have brought to workers over the decades. Lately, however, a growing number of unions have taken on a new fight: winning contract language and other policies that more directly help working families balance their work lives and their family needs.

Part of the push for family-friendly changes comes from pure demographics. More women are in the work force--and in unions; many women are the sole breadwinners for their families, which may include children as well as aging parents; and, in a large percentage of two-parent families, both parents are working full time. As a result, for many members, issues such as child and elder care, parental leave, flexible work options and expanded definitions of sick leave rank up there with decent salaries as a top priority they want their unions to address.

Reflecting these changing priorities, this year's AFT PSRP conference featured a theme of Balancing Work and Home: Unions Supporting Members. Plenary sessions and many workshops focused on the topic, including some workshops aimed at specific job classifications such as office employees, bus drivers, and custodial and maintenance employees. (See the story on page 3 for more conference details.) As pollster Geoff Garin of Peter Hart Research, who conducted a survey on the personal and professional concerns of AFT PSRPs for the conference, put it, "Unions have every right, ability and reason" to talk about the issues that create stress for their members both on and off the job.

One group that serves as something of a national resource on family issues for unions is the Labor Project for Working Families. The project's director, Netsy Firestein, spoke at a general session and conducted two workshops on bargaining family-friendly policies during the conference. Unions, Firestein told the PSRPs, are "an important voice for expanding and improving working family policies.... We need to be out there loud and clear" advocating for a range of improved benefits and policies.

Her group has worked with many unions, including the AFT, to craft innovative contract language and also to lobby for stronger state and national policies, such as paid family leave. In addition, Firestein helped create a "Work and Family Bill of Rights" (see chart) that she urges unions to adopt.

Firestein and others, including staff in the AFT's research department, have identified a range of important family-related topics for unions to address in contract negotiations and through labor-management committees. Union leaders and rank-and-file members alike should think about how these issues affect them and how their unions might address them. Among the issues:

Child care/elder care. Finding affordable child care is an obvious and pressing concern for many working families. Low-income working mothers may spend more than a quarter of their family income on child care. Less commonly discussed is the growing number of workers providing unpaid help to care for aging parents and other family members. Not surprisingly, 75 percent of the 2.2 million family members providing elder care are women, and 42 percent of them work full time outside the home.

The two issues are obviously different, but some of the same policies and contract provisions can help workers deal with young and old family members alike. Many employers are starting to provide dependent care accounts, which allow employees to exempt up to $5,000 a year from federal taxes and use those funds for dependent or child care expenses. While the accounts can save workers hundreds of dollars a year in taxes, they're only a modest step toward addressing the cost issue, and they do nothing about availability or quality of care.

One of the more sweeping contract examples comes from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees local union in San Francisco, which negotiated a child and elder care fund with the city's union hotels. The employers pay 15 cents to the fund for each hour an employee works. Workers apply to use the fund, which has grown to some $1.5 million. Other unions have expanded the use of members' sick leave--or added additional personal or family leave--so workers can use it to care for sick relatives, even those who don't live with them.

Parental leave. The United States is the only industrialized country without paid parental leave, Firestein points out. (The Family and Medical Leave Act provides unpaid parental and other types of leave. More on this important law shortly.) With that depressing fact in mind, any paid parental leave that unions can negotiate is a step in the right direction. The American Federation of Musicians local that bargains with the San Francisco symphony, for example, won 13 weeks of paid parental leave in its contract.

Obviously, paid parental leave is best, but extended unpaid leave--with the guarantee of the same job upon return--is another benefit that many new working parents lack. The paraprofessional chapter of the AFT-affiliated Lynn (Mass.) Teachers Union allows members to take up to two years' leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Their contract includes a variety of other family-friendly leave, including two weeks' (unpaid) marriage leave, one day leave with pay to attend graduation ceremonies (their own or those of immediate family members, and a range of religious leave for different denominations.

Return-to-work policies are also important in smoothing members' transition back from parental leave. AFT Local 3695, which represents professional employees at the University of Connecticut, negotiated a provision that allows new parents to work half-time for up to six months, and they may request an additional six months at half-time, subject to management's approval.

Flexible work arrangements. The same trends driving the need for improved contract language on child care, elder care and parental leave are leading employers to relax some of their traditional full-time, 9-to-5 work expectations. Compared to manufacturing and other industries, schools and colleges have less flexibility in work hours because of set schedules and jobs that coincide with students' school days. But provisions such as job sharing--where two employees typically share one full-time position--make sense for many workers.

The AFT's Madison (Wis.) Area Technical College PSRP Union has job-sharing language in its contract. The provision, which is available to members with at least three years of seniority, allows two employees to share a job and receive pro-rated benefits based on the number of hours they work. "It's sort of a pain from management's standpoint, but the people who have done it like it," says local president Janet Granberg. At this point, only three of about 400 members in the union are using it. "For lots of people, benefits are the most important thing," she says. "If the benefits are pro-rated, it might be more important for them to get the full benefits." Job shares at the college are one-year agreements that can be extended by mutual agreement.

As an example of far-reaching contract language on flexible work schedules, a Teamsters local and the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Philadelphia reached an agreement that allows employees to work a week consisting of the traditional five eight-hour days, four 10-hour days or three 13 1/3-hour days.

Another issue affecting many PSRPs, as well as a huge number of the AFT's higher education faculty members, involves getting employers to provide benefits for part-time employees (pro-rated benefits similar to those for people in job-sharing arrangements). Unfortunately, many employers provide few or no benefits to their part-time workers, who already earn relatively low salaries.

One of the first laws Bill Clinton signed when he became president in 1993 was the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). What the law does, in brief, is provide employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year for events such as childbirth, adoption, or a serious health problem of the worker or his or her spouse, parent or child. The employer must continue the employee's health benefits during the leave, and the worker has the right to return to the same or equivalent position. Now for the limitations: The employer must have at least 50 employees, and the employee has to have been employed for at least one year and have worked at least 1,250 hours (24 hours per week) over the previous 12 months.

Right off the bat, the 1,250-hour rule eliminates many part-time PSRPs. And, worse yet, even if they do meet that threshold, many education support staff can't afford to take unpaid leave. That's where unions can play an important role in modifying and improving the act's provisions. The classified unit of the AFT College Guild in Los Angeles, for example, cut in half the number of hours employees have to work to become eligible. Other unions have negotiated provisions such as making the leave paid, increasing the length beyond 12 weeks, putting the act in their contract so violations can be settled through the grievance procedure, and letting employees (rather than the employer, as the law allows) choose which type of leave to use.

Because the FMLA law is complicated, there's plenty of room for misinterpretation, so Netsy Firestein suggests that it's a great topic for union training. Union and public interest law firms can often provide experts. "It's always helpful to know more than the employer," she says.

See the Work and Family Bill of Rights.