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 ...
Don't look at this in the context of a "free market" vs. "government coercion" comparison.
There are many states that MANDATE "paid family leave" for all employers. And there's a growing political movement in Washington to make it a national entitlement.
I'm surprised the NYT reported this ... because the narrative they present here is what convinces me that this kind of nonsense never works.
Yeah, the usual suspects, usually.
Of course, I didn’t read the article. Having principles makes that superfluous. Again, don’t like your employer’s rules, leave.
Interestingly, this pattern seemed limited almost entirely to American-born employees. For immigrants with young children, I have noticed that it's almost the exact opposite.
I did. Now I am the employer. LOL.
Facebook and Salesforce seem to see it differently; it’s their right to act on their evaluation.
If them’s the rules, them’s the rules.
But a) they ain’t the rules and b) they are obnoxious rules that per these examples backfire with righteous resentment from your other employees.
Right on. When I was an employer, my only concern was making sure they showed up for their shifts and not stealing my booze. I wouldn’t presume to tell other employers how to get what they want from their workers.
Parents raise and pay for tomorrow’s tax payers — that simple fact is lost on too many
Then they have a breach of contract remedy. And (b), that problem is self-correcting.
Compensation, including wages and benefits (including paid leave) should be based on your accomplishments at work, not your spawning practices at home.
Your argument is the kind of crap that had minorities and women paid less for equal work for decades.
Go crawl back under your rock.
We should be encouraging families, we declared War on the Family over 50 years ago, and the results have been disastrous.
Lol, “EXACTLY!!” sez who?
IIRC there’s been research showing single manager and up women putting in the most hours and married with kids manager and up women the least.
Agreed
One of the interesting things about the article is that these measures were adopted without a lot of preparation -- simply because there wasn't any time to prepare.
The whole point of the article is that these companies don't even know if the paid leave policies -- along with the other changes that are driving this resentment (like not measuring employee performance during the COVID-19 disruptions) are going to work in the long run.
Basically the feminine workplace nowadays is divided between prostututes and mothers... prostitutes are terrified by mothers
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