Letter: Parents work too hard

CAROL SAVAGE is out on a limb when she says that she is "happy to work a 12-hour day", starting at 8am and finishing at midnight, stopping at 5pm to put her son to bed ("Inflexible employers 'driving women out of Britain's workforce' ", 23 March). She claims that long working hours split between the office and home is the sort of "flexibility" employers should offer professional women who have children.

MSF is a trade union with 400,000 members working in professional and skilled occupations in the private and public sectors. Those with children need to be able to effectively balance their time spent on paid work and working for their family. Many parents want to be able to rearrange, even reduce the hours spent on paid work.

Doing paid work until midnight assists neither the employer, whose employee will not be productive at that time; nor the working parent, who will be exhausted. Transferring the macho, ineffective, long hours culture from the office to the home is no answer. Parents need to be able to balance time effectively, not juggle an overload in working hours.

ROGER LYONS

General Secretary, MSF

London EC1