My previous posts this week have focused on the difficulties and injustices faced by millions of American workers--wage stagnation, growing income inequality, managers treating their employees in shockingly callous ways. (It's all part of the systematic squeeze that I describe in my new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. See stevengreenhouse.com)

It's July Fourth--and I'm feeling patriotic--so today I will focus on some of what's good in America. Some corporations do not just a good job, but a great job, in how they treat those workers, and I want to focus on some of these stellar employers because we can all learn from them and because they should serve as models for all of corporate America.

The casino-hotels of Las Vegas sponsor an amazing, no-tuition training program in which a $22,000-a-year busboy can train to become a $50,000 a year waiter and even a $75,000 a year sommelier. Each year Patagonia, the outdoors apparel company, gives 40 employees two-month paid leaves to work for the environmental organization of their choice. With its headquarters 150 yards from the Pacific, Patagonia happily allows its employees to go surfing for two-and-a-half hours at lunch time, so long as they get the job done.

In my chapter, "Taking the High Road," I also describe Costco and how its workers earn $46,500 a year after four-and-a-half years on the job, including the company's 401(k) contributions. That's nearly twice what Costco's archrival, Wal-Mart, pays workers after four-and-a-half years on the job.

In an indication of how little Costco workers have to complain about, one survey found that its employees' biggest complaint was that the company wouldn't let them wear shorts to work certain months. (Costco, responding to employee concerns, now lets wear shorts year-round.) No, I'm not saying that Costco is perfect--I'm sure that some of its workers have serious complaints--but imagine if not being able to wear shorts year-round were the biggest complaint that every American worker had about his or her job. America would be workplace heaven.

I was especially impressed with what Ernst & Young, the giant accounting firm, has done to make itself a better, more family-friendly workplace. Ernst & Young has lots to teach other white-collar employers.

E&Y's former chairman, Phil Laskawy, told me that when he was growing up in the Bronx, the smartest kids in high school were girls. He added that when he first joined Ernst & Young, the top performers among new hires were women. But he was dismayed that only 5 percent of the firm's partners were female.

It was the mid-1990's, and Laskawy saw that many women were leaving Ernst & Young because they thought the demands of their job were incompatible with the demands of being a good mother. It was not unusual for junior accountants to work 24 hours straight, shower in the office, and then soldier on the next day.

"Part of our retention problem was that people were feeling too stressed out and working too many hours," Laskawy said. "We saw we were letting our best people go."

So Ernst & Young overhauled its corporate culture. It created an unusually flexible set of flexible work arrangements, allowing people to work four days a week, work three days a week, work fulltime in the months before April 15 and then switch to three-day weeks, or work 60 hours a week in the traditional busy season and then take the summer off.

Ernst & Young has 24,000 U.S. employees, and one-tenth of them--2,000 women and 400 men--are on flexible work arrangements. (Yes, men also want to spend more time with the kids.) So as not to discourage employees from taking flexible arrangements, E&Y provides full health coverage to anyone who works at least 20 hours a week.

Laskawy's successor as chairman, Jim Turley, says these flexible policies don't reduce the firm's productivity because they help it retain talented employees. "If we have 80 percent of a person's talents and focus," Turley said, "80 percent of anything is a lot better than zero percent."

By promoting many women who have been on flexible arrangements, E&Y has convinced its female employees that opting for a flexible work arrangement does not impede their chances of becoming a partner. Today more than 15 percent of the firm's partners are women, and one in three newly named partners is female--still not as high as the firm's leaders would like.

To reduce stress, managers have been told to place far less emphasis on face time. The important thing, they are told, is to make sure the work gets done and clients are satisfied. It's fine if a worker goes home at 3 p.m. to attend Janie or Johnnie's soccer game and then works for three hours at home afterward--so long as the employee gets the job done. "We tell managers, 'Don't take attendance to measure results,' " said Maryella Gockel, who oversees the firm's flexibility programs.

Women at Ernst & Young receive twelve weeks' paid leave when they give birth, and the firm lets them take another ten weeks of unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Most employees get four weeks and two days of vacation after five years on the job.

E&Y's employees do work hard when they are at work, and to help de-stress them and give them more time with their families, the firm gives everyone four-day weekends for Memorial Day, July Fourth and Labor Day. With the firm shut down, workers know there is no need to check their voice mail or email because nobody at the firm is supposed to be working.

Ernst & Young has another important--and unusual--strategy to help make sure that partners don't push their subordinates too hard. Employees get to write performance reviews of their bosses. One senior partner told me, "If partners are setting a tone whereby there's not a work-life balance and you're just expected to work like a dog, they get negative reviews." To prevent bosses from retaliating against their critics down below, "it's all anonymous so the staff can write whatever they want--this guy's a real hard ass, and he makes us work all the time." If a partner receives bad ratings, the partner takes a hit in annual pay.

I loved what Rob Johnson, the head of Ernst & Young Cleveland office, told me. "We want people to stay," he said. "The firm has come to a realization that we have to do a better job accommodating a person's personal life because this can't be just a meat factory where we grind up people, where people come in and stay two or three years and they work their butts off and leave."

Amen. If other companies followed Ernst & Young's far-sighted policies, then maybe we all wouldn't feel so stressed and squeezed.