It might seem like vanilla stuff for some of the world’s almost capitalized companies in the world to provide extra support to employees during a global pandemic, but not so at companies like Facebook and Twitter, where a rift has formed between parents, non-parents and employers over the companies’ policy responses to daycare and school closures, according to an article in the New York Times, which was published over the weekend.
At issue is a group of policies instituted at several major tech firms meant to address the drastic and unprecedented predicament everyone faced, including policies that took into account that parents who worked full-time, could only do so because things like company-provided or private daycare or schools were open. Unsurprisingly, when they shuttered, companies had to scramble to assist parents with this increased burden. Among the instances of this were a Facebook policy that provided 10 weeks of paid time off for employees who had children affected by school or daycare closures and 6 weeks of paid time off for parent workers at Salesforce.
However, many childless workers have voiced their concerns that parents are getting preferential treatment and that they are having to pick up the slack without being recognized for it. According to the article, there have been angry exchanges over internal message boards at Facebook and Twitter and calls for Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to address these concerns.
Like many problems that seem to come out of nowhere as a result of the pandemic are actually the eruptions of deeply simmering resentments about additional benefits conferred to parents. Regardless, the pandemic has thrown these issues into starker relief and it makes for a fascinating read, considering we have spent months like a broken record reminding people that with childcare decimated the biggest losers in this will be parents, especially mothers, who have to pick up significantly more of the slack and ultimately sacrifice their careers for childcare.
