Policy guidelines for collective bargaining and family planning.

Abstract

The benfits of establishing family planning through collective bargaining to both labor and management are discussed. Until workers can be convinced that their children will receive health care education and employment and that they will be economically secure in old age it is difficult to convince them of the many benefits of child spacing and small family size. In 1953 it was calculated by management in a Japanese steel factory that about 70% of all acidents could be attributable to difficulties in the private lives of employees. In order to ease problems in the home collective agreements were initiated by management in the Nippon Express Company to provide family planning services. Labor agreed as long as the workers were to share in the economic awards which came from participation. Costs of implementing the family planning programs were fully offset by the decrease in expenditure on family allowances confinement nursing and so on. In India some ten estates began a program in which a certain amount of money is paid into an account for every month that a woman does not become pregnant. If the woman becomes pregnant she forfeits a substantial amount of the fund. This money comes directly from the funds which would normally have to be set aside to provide for maternity and child support programs. Certain guidelines are presented in the paper to outline the areas of responsibility of labor and management in the provision of family planning services. Among the many possibilities mentioned is the idea that both labor and management could look into the conceivability of plowing back a portion of whatever savings are accrued by management into a pension scheme to compensate workers for the loss of labor caused by having fewer children than were previously anticipated.