Employers Waking Up to Child-Care Cries
Like sleepy parents who wishfully ignore an infant’s first muffled cry in the night only to give in as the inevitable crescendo rises, California’s major employers seem to have been forced awake by a child-care crisis.
In the past two years, dozens of companies have set up task forces to study the problems employees have in finding good, reasonable and dependable care for their children. Growing numbers have set up child-care centers at the workplace; more are beginning to subsidize the cost of private care or are hiring firms to help employees find good care facilities.
“A lot of California companies have not only finally taken a step (into child care), but a giant step,” says Sandra Burud, a child-care benefits consultant in Pasadena.
Why the sudden burst of interest? After all, the problem is as old as working parents, and the issue has been carefully studied for more than a decade, especially as more women have risen through the corporate ranks. And why, too, does it appear that California companies are finally getting on the bandwagon after lagging many other states, especially in the East?
In the past, many corporations deliberately avoided addressing the issue. They were afraid of the liability problems of providing child care directly, or they worried about the expense of subsidizing the cost.
But now, like an infant in the night, the cries are much more urgent and unavoidable. Some observers believe that, in California, the situation has come to a head because of the increasing stress on workers with children.
Virtually every employer is hearing horror stories. The long commute: an hour to the day-care center in the morning and half an hour from there to work--then the reverse in the evening. The fear: A baby sitter disappears or quits. The worry: A parent is caught in traffic and won’t be able to pick up a child before the center closes. The panic: A child is ill but too far away for the parent to rush over from work. The frustration: knowing that the only real solution may be to quit work and cut back your standard of living.
“The stress on parents is higher in California because we drive so much, and the day-care centers aren’t always close to home or work,” says Ron Garner, a consultant who works with Child & Family Services in Los Angeles.
Interestingly, the push for child-care benefits in California has spread most rapidly among companies that do not have a predominantly female work force. In the past, child care has been considered a “women’s benefit,” and companies that provided the best child-care benefits were those with the largest percentage of women employees--such as banks and hospitals.
That is changing dramatically. Take, for example, TRW Inc. and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
TRW, a giant aerospace and defense contractor, has about 13,000 employees in Southern California, and about 65% are male. The company has just broken ground on a state-of-the-art child-care center at its complex in Redondo Beach that will eventually house more than 200 children of employees. TRW also offers a number of other child-care benefits, including after-school programs and referrals. “It’s demographics: more working women, more joint custody, more men with working wives,” says Betsy Bosak, TRW’s program manager for child care.
DWP has 11,500 employees, about 78% of whom are male. It is constructing two child-care centers, one at its new complex in Van Nuys and another at its headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. Together, they will house about 150 children. The department also offers care at three other centers near DWP facilities, as well as referrals and parenting classes. About 2,000 DWP employees take advantage of the programs, according to Beverly King, human resources director.
Both TRW and DWP acknowledge that providing child-care benefits to employees isn’t cheap, but they also acknowledge that the crying need for such care forced them to act.
“We found that it was costing us $1 million a year due to employee absences and tardiness related to child-care problems,” King says. “Our estimates suggest that we gain $2.50 for every $1 we invest in child-care solutions.”
Another factor spurring the sudden employer interest in child-care benefits is a tax credit enacted by the state Legislature in 1988 that gives employers a direct credit equal to 30% of their costs for subsidizing employee child care. It’s limited to $50,000 a year. California is one of just a handful of states to have such a tax incentive for employers.
State Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara) pushed for the bill and finally saw it enacted after vetoes by Gov. George Deukmejian in 1986 and 1987.
In a way, that legislative history mirrors the course of child-care benefits in California. It’s clear that employers in the state are finally realizing that such benefits reap them a reward in reduced absenteeism and increased employee loyalty. And political leaders are recognizing that encouragement of child-care solutions is popular with voters.
Business and government have been behind the times on this issue. They were late to recognize the stress that people with children are under, they were blind to the fact that men as well as women are having problems coping with child-care crises, they were ignorant of the changing family demographics in California.
Let’s hope that, despite all the cries in the night, they won’t go back to sleep.
