Posted on 09/05/2020 12:07:57 PM PDT by Theoria
Pandemic policies at tech companies have created a rift between parents offered more benefits and resentful workers who don’t have children.
When the coronavirus closed schools and child care centers and turned American parenthood into a multitasking nightmare, many tech companies rushed to help their employees. They used their comfortable profit margins to extend workers new benefits, including extra time off for parents to help them care for their children.
It wasn’t long before employees without children started to ask: What about us?
At a recent companywide meeting, Facebook employees repeatedly argued that work policies created in response to Covid-19 “have primarily benefited parents.” At Twitter, a fight erupted on an internal message board after a worker who didn’t have children at home accused another employee, who was taking a leave to care for a child, of not pulling his weight.
When Salesforce announced that it was offering parents six weeks of paid time off, most employees applauded. But one Salesforce manager, who is not permitted to talk publicly about internal matters and therefore asked not to be identified, said two childless employees, reflecting a sentiment voiced at several companies, complained that the policy seemed to put parents’ needs ahead of theirs.
As companies wrestle with how best to support staff during the pandemic, some employees without children say that they feel underappreciated, and that they are being asked to shoulder a heavier workload.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
>>The “child free and proud” losers are free to work elsewhere.<<
So are the proud breeder class. It sounds to me like you think breeders are more equal than child free.
Company work time, time off and pay should be based on work product and never on what happens at the EE’s home.
This concept of equality may seem quaint to some.
Your name says it all. Sorry you are impotent and can’t have children. It sucks to be you. On your deathbed next week, you’ll be alone and bitter just like you have been your entire pathetic life. You couldn’t even procreate. Lol. The one job you had. Not shocked!
When my children were older I began volunteering to work on holidays so those with younger children, and usually less seniority, could be off with their families. The extra holiday pay for working didn’t hurt either.
Sorry you can’t read; I have kids. And that wasn’t a “job,” it was a business, that I owned. Sold it for a good bit of money, too. Now I work, for self-satisfaction mostly, making Freedom Tubes.
If you lived here in NJ you’d realize that without a large income (from one or two or three sources) you would have a low standard of living and live in an unsafe area. Ditto for NY state; it is why the middle class is fleeing these two states. Two average incomes don’t provide what would pass for a “middle class” lifestyle in Middle America.
I still don’t understand why your so bitter then.
“She was saying the resentments brewing in their company, is between stay at home employees and those who have to be on site. Its college education vs non college education.”
I could do most of my work remotely (and was doing so), but couldn’t imagine sending clerical staff in while I hid under my bed. If we are to be at X% of staff in the office, I let the staff rotate; I couldn’t live with myself or expect them to respect me if I exposed them to danger without assuming the same risks...
In my experience the resentful childless women just started using “family” as the same excuse the mothers used - but applied it to their parents (also covered under most family leave laws/policies).
I’m a parent who has had to work regardless of what’s going on at home; that isn’t the employer’s problem. Fortunately I deal with older staff (all with grown children); unfortunately they’ll retire soon...
It is the employees problem for sure which is why there will be multiple lawsuits and the childless will win. You can not show favoritism in the office. Maybe in the 70’s you could but not today.
I agree, but unfortunately most of the plaintiffs are white and the employees receiving the preferential treatment are not. The companies/defendants will be depicted as “woke”...
“If you’re the manager, you figure out how to do the job without requiring so much travel.”
In some circumstances travel can be curtailed. However, when selling expensive highly technical products onsite demonstrations are often key to making the sale. In some industries sales people are also present for the product installation and puts technical people on site to assist the customer in training its employees on the newly installed product. A good company takes junior people on such customer visits so they can learn and be ready for advancement. An email, video, text, or telephone conversation is no substitute for being on site and seeing how problems are dealt with in the moment.
It has been my experience when a large customer contributing 10% or more of your company’s annual sales asks for a sales person, a product development person, or a technical person, or other support person to be a a particular location at a particular time, trying to avoid the trip and provide the support by telephone or email is not a best practice. When customers become irritated by a supplier, they immediately go to plan B which always involves a competitor.
The best telephone calls I received during my business career were from customers trying to solve a problem which one of my competitors could not. I never liked to travel, but when a customer had a problem serious enough to make the call, I got on a plane. I learned if you fixed a problem, it was easy to ask for and obtain more business. Employees don’t learn these lessons using email, texts, or Zoom conferences.
Oh great. That sucks. When can we get off this insane ride? God is taking his good ole time. The United States is worse then Samson and Gomorrah.
Then i hate to tell you but your life math is off.
2 parents working + kids = bad news. It is unfair to all involved, no matter how “good” the parents are. One can rarely manufacture time.
And if you do the hard math you will see that 2 incomes does not produce twice the outcome.
There is no doubt that 2 incomes doesn’t produce twice the outcome, but even 1.5 times the income would let you live in a better area than 1 income.
The problem is quite simple; more and more people feel that if they want a standard of living comparable to what our parents had, then having children is off the table. The result is the demographic disaster we’re experiencing today, where we are trafficking foreigners here to replace those American children who will never be born. The “American” culture, however you define it, will be gone within a couple of generations.
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