As a political football, the word "family" gets a good workout in this town.
President Clinton has been running with the Family and Medical Leave Act since he entered the White House. The Democrats huddled last year and tried a "Families First" agenda, though little has been said about it lately.Now come the Republicans, who have made passage of Sen. John Ashcroft's Family - there's that word again - Friendly Workplace Act a priority this session.
The Missouri Republican's bill contains another phrase that has Democrats sweating: "flex time," which in Washington now translates as "family time."
The bill permits an employee to work more than 40 hours one week, then use the extra hours as paid time to attend to family needs. And it also allows an employee to work 80 hours over a two-week period in any combination.
Organized labor and other opponents contend that flex time would allow employers to coerce employ-ees to accept comp time instead of overtime pay. They say it would become a tool for breaking down the wage laws.
Republicans say their plan simply offers voluntary alternatives for stressed workers to help them better juggle the demands of job and home life.
"From (the Republicans') perspective, it really has a combination of nice characteristics," said Barbara Sinclair, a professor of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It presumably speaks to their problems with women, and it sticks it to the labor unions."
The Republicans are still smarting from the millions spent by organized labor in congressional races last year. It didn't gain control for the Democrats, but it clearly helped narrow the political margin to 19 seats in the House.
For the GOP it is a chance to seize an issue that Clinton monopolized during last year's campaign. From school uniforms to childhood literacy to family leave, the president tried to speak to families wrestling with kitchen-table concerns like work, schools and the amount of time parents spend with their children.
GOP strategists also see women fast becoming a Democratic constituency, and they need to slow that drift before the 2000 campaign.
Women are "so desperate for this," said Barbara Ledeen, executive director of the Independent Women's Forum, a nonpartisan group concerned with women's issues. "What they want is an option. They don't know about the bill. All they know is, `I don't have enough time. Give me more time. Figure it out.' "
As ammunition, Ledeen cited a poll taken by her group after the November election. It showed that more than half of the women surveyed between 18 and 49 years old said they would be willing to sacrifice seniority or pay for more personal time.
"To me, this is the essence of women's lib," Ledeen said. "This is where the rubber hits the road."
But Ashcroft's bill gives organized labor and liberal Democrats fits and the White House political heartburn.
The president wants to make good on his campaign promise to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act, the first bill he signed upon coming into office. The law now gives up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for the birth of a child, adoption, foster care or care related to illness of the worker or the worker's child, spouse or parent.