Berkeley Flexible Work Time Initiative

 

Introduction

About Us

Endorsements


Summary

Work Time and
the Environment

Work Time and
the Family

Work Time and
the Good Life

Work Time and Economics

Work Time Choice
is a Success

Work Time Choice: Model Policies

FAQs

Classic Essays


Leaflet [PDF]

Initiative Text

 

 

Introduction

 


Introducing this Initiative

Measure Q, the Flexible Work Time Initiative, won overwhelmingly on November 4, 2014, with 78.79% voting yes. On January 27, 2015, the city council referred the issue to the Labor Commission, the first step in getting a law passed. The council passsed the ordinance on first reading on Jan. 24, 2017. The text of the ordinance is here [PDF].

This video is the best general introduction to the initiative. If you want more details after seeing this video, then click the links on the menu to the left, from Summary through FAQs. For news updates, see our Facebook page.

 

SF Assemblyman David Chiu Supports Our Initiative

David Chiu was elected to the state Assembly on November 4, 2014. At the time he made this video, he was President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was the leading proponent of San Francisco's Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance, which was passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors and took effect January 1, 2014.

In this interview, Sup. Chiu supports Berkeley's Flexible Work Time Initiative, discusses San Francisco's Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance, and hopes that San Francisco and Berkeley can create momentum that leads to a similar state law.

 

Robert Kennedy on the Gross National Product

In this speech, made at Kansas State University on March 18, 1968, Robert Kennedy criticized our obsession with the Gross National Product, which he said "measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile." Kennedy made this speech two days after he began his campaign for president, running as a peace candidate who promised to end the Vietnam War - a campaign that was cut short by his tragic assasination on June 5, 1968. (When this video was made, Congress was holding hearings about alternative ways of measuring economic well-being, referred to at the end of the video.)

At the time when Kennedy gave this speech, America's per capita Gross National Product was about one-half of what it is today (after correcting for inflation).

Walter Cronkite on Work Time

"Technology is opening a new world of leisure time. One government report projects that by the year 2000, the United States will have a 30-hour work week and month-long vacations as the rule."

- News anchor Walter Cronkite in the 1967 documentary The Twenty-First Century.

 


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