Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/579838
20 Hartford Business Journal • October 5, 2015 www.HartfordBusiness.com OPINION & COMMENTARY EDITORIAL Challenging hospital pay won't solve budget crisis G ov. Dannel P. Malloy has gone to war with the state's hospitals, accusing health- care executives of essentially being corporate fat cats. When hospitals complained about Malloy's plan to cut an additional $63.5 million in Medicaid funding to sure up the state's ailing budget, the Democratic gover- nor shot back, arguing nonprofit hospitals are swimming in profits, while their execu- tives are reaping multi-million dollar salaries. It is true, hospitals are coming off a very good year, posting a collective $916 mil- lion surplus in fiscal 2014. Hospital executives also do get paid well, with salaries and fringe benefits that, on average, cross the million-dollar threshold. But Malloy and other hospital-pay critics haven't fashioned an evidence-based argument indicating Connecticut hospital executives are overpaid. In fact, an analysis last year by Modern Healthcare found that the average U.S. non- profit hospital CEO made $2.2 million in 2012; Connecticut hospital CEOs saw average salaries and fringe benefits total about $1.1 million in fiscal 2014, well below the 2012 national average. Malloy's focus on hospital pay is pure politics and misguided. Cutting hospital execu- tive pay won't solve the state's budget crisis, which has been created by decades of irresponsible spending decisions by state lawmakers. Hospitals need to attract the best and brightest executives to manage one of the most complex industries in the country. Malloy, however, is correct to go after healthcare spending as a way to help the state save money. State government is a major payer of health care and it should play a role in pressuring hospitals to lower their overall cost structure. The difficult part, of course, is determining where the line must be drawn before bud- get cuts drastically undermine hospitals' ability to adequately care for patients. The Mal- loy administration, which has targeted hospitals for budget cuts on several occasions, believes healthcare institutions still have more fat to trim. Hospitals, on the other hand, are crying "uncle," warning of cuts to staffing and services that will hurt patient care. Malloy and the state's hospitals must work together to find a happy medium. Saving Hartford Club a good sign This week, cheers go out to Alan Lazowski, chairman and CEO of LAZ Parking, and Henry M. Zachs, a local realty investor and CEO of Message Center Management, who led a group of about 40 investors to save The Hartford Club from foreclosure and potential extinction. The two Hartford businessmen and group of club members recently purchased the club's mortgage from Berkshire Bank, which had previously foreclosed on the $1.1 mil- lion debt. The financial lifeline will mean The Hartford Club, a venerable downtown institution whose heyday admittedly passed decades ago, remains open, preserving an institution that still serves as an important meeting place for local businesspeople. The strength of a city can be measured, in part, by the community involvement and investment of its businesses. The Hartford Club's struggles throughout the last few decades were reflective of Hartford's own economic malaise. The fact that business leaders stepped up to save it underscores the sense of optimism that has begun to permeate downtown Hartford in the last few years. The Hartford Club said it has seen an uptick in membership and restaurant business in 2015. We hope that positive momentum continues, particularly as more businesses consider making downtown Hartford their home base. n OTHER VOICES If you ask for job flexibility, will you be punished? By Anne-Marie Slaughter R eal flexibility — the kind that gives you at least a measure of control over when and how you work in a week, a month, a year, and over the course of a career — is a critical part of the solution to the prob- lem of how to fit work and care together. In most work- places, however, flex policies exist largely on paper. It is often exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for employees to avail themselves of them. Even when firms and their managers actually support flex policies, employees often don't ask. And for good reason. In a work culture in which commitment to your career is supposed to mean you never think about or do anything else, ask- ing for flexibility to fit your work and your life together is tantamount to declaring that you do not care as much about your job as your co-workers do. Dame Fiona Woolf, a British solicitor and former lord mayor of London, puts it succinctly: "Girls don't ask for [flexible work] because they think it's career suicide." Kathryn Beaumont Murphy was already a mother when she became a junior associate, a rarity at big law firms. She had a generous maternity leave and took advantage of the flex- time policy when she returned after having her second child. She was allowed to work "part- time" for six months after her maternity leave ended, though it was still 40 hours a week. "At the end of that six-month period," Mur- phy says, "I was told by the all-male leader- ship of my department that I could not con- tinue on a flexible schedule as it would hurt my professional growth." She ended up leaving the firm for a less prestigious job that pays much less, but where she has more control over her schedule. Her children are now five and eight, and after her experience she now believes that "flexibility is as valuable as compensation." In 2013, the Journal of Social Issues pub- lished a special issue on "flexibility stigma" that included several studies showing that workers who take advantage of company policies specifi- cally designed to let them adjust their schedules to accommodate caregiving responsibilities may still receive wage penalties, lower perfor- mance evaluations and fewer promotions. If anything, men who try to take advan- tage of flexible policies have it even worse. Joan Blades and Nanette Fondas, co- authors of "The Custom-Fit Workplace," give the example of a law firm associate named Carlos who tried to arrange for pater- nity leave and was told that his company's parental leave policy was really meant just for women. But even if his firm had said yes, it's likely that he then would have paid an even bigger price in terms of his chances for advancement and overall mistreatment than his female colleagues did. A Catalyst study showing that men and women tend to use flexibility policies differently underlines the dangers that men perceive. The men and women in their study were equally likely to use a variety of flextime arrangements, from flexible arrival and departure times to compressing work in vari- ous ways across the week. But women were 10 percent more likely than men to work from home and men were almost twice as likely as women to say that they had never telecom- muted over the course of their careers. Patterns like these show that men are aware that if a certain kind of flexibility means a lot less face time at the office, they won't run the risk of being penalized for tak- ing advantage of it. To be stigmatized means to be singled out, shamed and discriminated against for some trait or failing. Stigma based on race, creed, gender, or sexual orientation is sharply and explicitly disapproved of in contemporary American society. Why should stigma based on taking advan- tage of company policy to care for loved ones be any different? Workers who work from home or even take time off do not lose IQ points. Their choice to put family alongside or even ahead of career advancement does not necessar- ily affect the quality of their work, even if it reduces the quantity. However effective flexibility policies may seem in theory, flexibility cannot be the solu- tion to work-life issues as long as it is stigma- tized. The question that young people should be asking their employers is not what kinds of family-friendly policies a particular firm has. Instead, they should ask, "How many employees take advantage of these policies? How many men? And how many women and men who have worked flexibly have advanced to top positions in the firm?" While we're working to remove the stigma from flexibility, we must also recognize that even the limited flexibility that white-collar workers take for granted doesn't exist at all for low-income hourly workers. More than 70 percent of low-wage workers in the United States do not get paid sick days, which means that they risk losing their jobs when a child care or health issue arises. In fact, nearly one-quarter of adults in the Unit- ed States have been fired or threatened with job loss for taking time off to recover from illness or care for a sick loved one. For millions of American workers, then, flexibility is not the solution but the problem. Women and men at the top cannot advocate for more flexibility without insisting that these policies be implemented in ways that help workers rather than hurt them. The kind of flexibility we need does not stigmatize or exploit. Ending flexibility stig- ma in the workplace must be about making room for care in all our lives, not an addi- tional excuse to stop caring about the human impact of our policies. n Anne-Marie Slaughter is president and CEO of New America. She is the author of "Unfin- ished Business: Women Men Work Family," published last week by Penguin Random House and from which this article, which first appeared on CNNMoney.com, is adapted. HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM POLL Who's to blame for CT's soaring budget deficit? ● Gov. Malloy ● Republicans ● Democrats ● All state law-, budget-makers To vote, go online to HartfordBusiness.com. Last week's poll results: Are hospital funding cuts the best way to deal with the state budget deficit? 2.9% Yes 97.1% No Anne-Marie Slaughter