Blue Year’s Eve

To mark the millennium, Linda Aparicio had planned a masquerade party for friends and family at her Pico Rivera home. Her husband’s costume was to be a surprise, her 2-year-old son was to be a cartoon character and she was to be Marie Antoinette.

But Y2K guillotined that fairy tale. At the stroke of midnight, Aparicio will be on a cell phone or behind a laptop computer at an L.A. City Hall emergency command center, some four stories underground.

“I can’t believe I won’t be with my husband and son when it hits 2000,” said Aparicio, who will serve as an interdepartmental liaison for the Public Works Department. “For 24 years, I’d been waiting for this, and then I have to work.”

The Aparicios are not alone in facing the prospect of separation on what will arguably be one of the biggest celebratory nights the world has seen. Depending upon the industry, most companies are doubling or tripling staff levels compared with other less historic New Year’s Eves.

Joining the long-suffering ranks of police, fire and medical personnel who always work holidays--and their families, who are used to it--this New Year’s Eve will involve tens of thousands of computer, customer service, managerial, finance and public relations employees. The one-time midnight army, who in some cases have been preparing for years, all have one objective: being on hand to quell any emergency produced by computers crashing as a result of the greatly hyped Y2K bug.

But in all the endless calculations and contingency plans, the one element almost always overlooked is the employee’s family. Few workplaces have taken into account that family members would want to experience the once-in-1,000-year event together, and while some companies are offering dinners, bonuses or gifts to workers, their decisions primarily are linked to compensation issues rather than family concerns.

In a sense, the flash of the millennium has thrown a light on the continuing tension in American society between work and family, a tug of war that has intensified in recent decades with the rise in dual-career households.

“[Such] is the onward march of the marketplace. Our capitalist ethos has changed our view of time,” said Arlie Hochschild, a UC Berkeley professor who has written several books about the workplace and family. “Minutes and hours have been commodified; they are only worth so much money,” Hochschild says. “We need to back up and say, ‘What’s important here? Isn’t sharing moments like [the millennium] with family what life is all about?’ ”

Many families aren’t thinking just of warm, fuzzy feelings. What if the doomsayers are right and all hell breaks loose? Do you want to be with the gang from computer operations or with your spouse and kids?

At best, some companies say they will allow family members at the workplace--as long as it doesn’t pose a safety risk or interfere with work. At worst, many companies (including The Times) are requiring some employees to work but are not offering child care on a night that will possibly be the hardest--and most expensive--in recent history to find a sitter.

“This is the toughest night I’ve ever seen for baby-sitting,” said Mark Lattman, head of Los Angeles-based Baby Sitters Guild, which, unlike many child-care providers, is not doubling or tripling its rates for New Year’s Eve. “We’re having trouble finding enough sitters because they all want to go out too.”

To be fair, some companies are trying to limit staffing out of consideration for workers’ families.

“We didn’t approach this like the military,” said Glenn Meister, a spokesman for the Los Angeles branch of William M. Mercer, a global human resources consulting firm. “We weren’t going to assign 20 people to come in and then have only six actually work.”

But a recent William M. Mercer national survey of 272 businesses found that about half have decided that giving pay bonuses, lodging or extra vacation time to employees who work at any time during the New Year’s weekend is sufficient compensation for extra work. Other firms are throwing elaborate employee-only dinners, hiring bands and giving away prizes.

“If you’re going to be working on Y2K, you might as well go home with a new 30-inch, picture-in-picture TV,” said Kirkland H. Rice, a project manager at AT&T; Solutions, which is handing out an array of expensive electronics.

And at least one company believes its corporate headquarters is a fine substitute for home, come midnight, although it’s inviting any family members who want to come along. Seattle-based Microsoft Corp. will distribute time capsules and serve up a champagne dinner and a deejay dance party to about 300 midnight employees. In fact, the software giant was in the unusual position of turning away employees because so many people volunteered to work.

“It’s the biggest event ever for technology,” said Microsoft spokeswoman Kimberly Kuresman. “Where else would you want to be [New Year’s Eve] but at Microsoft?”

One of the few companies that remembered the child-care issue was Cisco Systems Inc., a computer company based in San Jose. The world’s largest maker of Internet equipment felt leaving families, especially single-parent households, to fend for themselves this New Year’s Eve wasn’t in keeping with the spirit of the season. The company will provide child care and is considering gift packages and game rooms for the children as well.

“This is history. It’s a major holiday, it’s not just any New Year’s,” said John Earnhardt, a spokesman for Cisco, which will have thousands working at midnight. “We’ll be here to support the customer, but we want to make employees as comfortable as possible.”

It’s hardly surprising, say sociologists, that companies didn’t factor in the family in their massive Y2K planning. Americans are famous for their dedication to work.

After all, American part- and full-time workers now lead the industrialized world in most hours worked per week--an average of 37--according to the most recent data from the International Labour Organization.

And despite their dogged pursuit of leisure, Americans still have far less time for it than citizens of other industrialized countries. American companies customarily start new workers with two weeks’ vacation and require several years of service before increasing it, while most Europeans automatically receive five or six weeks.

America’s stern habits are the result of the so-called Protestant work ethic, in which productive labor bestows prosperity and God’s redemption upon its adherents, sociologists say. The belief still holds such sway today that not only employers, but employees too, quietly accept the primacy of work over family, sociologists say.

“Families juggle their time with work everyday,” said Tamara Hareven, Unidel professor of family studies and history at the University of Delaware. “It’s only because it now affects people of a high professional level whose skills are needed for the millennium that it is getting any attention at all.”

Sacrificing time with his family for work is something with which Robert Konishi, director of medical computer services at UCLA, is well-acquainted. Charged with keeping UCLA’s medical center running for Y2K, Konishi has been putting in 60-hour work weeks for years.

“It’s a huge responsibility,” said Konishi, who has backup plans to keep the university hospital operating even if power is lost. “It has to get done.”

And, of course, he won’t be home New Year’s Eve. His wife and children plan to get together with other relatives who live nearby.

“It’s disappointing. Otherwise, we’d probably be heading up to the local mountains for a family vacation,” said the 42-year-old father of three children ages, 9, 7 and 2. “But I try to spend as much time with my family as I can, because with work I don’t have a lot of free time.”

Households in which one or both of the wage earners are in 24/7 occupations seem to be coping best with the demands of Y2K. Colleen Williams, a news anchor for KNBC, will be on the air New Year’s Eve. Her husband, John, is sympathetic. A pilot, he’s flown emergency missions to Haiti and Africa on Christmas for the U.S. Air Force.

“My husband keeps telling me there’s going to be a party [on New Year’s Eve],” said Williams, who has a 6-year-old son. “But I’m not sure whether he’ll have it at home or at [KNBC].”

For her part, Williams has never been a big fan of the New Year’s Eve hoopla, much less a millennium bash.

“I don’t ask off for New Year’s Eve anymore,” said Williams, whose family has a tradition of attending the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day. “There’s so much pressure to have a great time, and it always seems to fall short.”

Workers accustomed to pulling shifts on big family holidays often have little sympathy for this year’s Johnny-come-latelys.

“They’re crying about working New Year’s Eve just one time?” said Daryl Arbuthnott, a battalion chief with the Los Angeles Fire Department, who has worked 15 of the last 19 New Year’s Eves. “Hey, that’s par for the course for us.”

Although they may gripe about being away from their families, most workers admit that the mission is an important one and certainly benefits the family.

“We’re a leading world city, and I’m one of the few people chosen to help out on an extremely important project,” Aparicio said. “I’m honored they think that much of me.”

Others have retained a sense of humor about their work and family predicament this New Year’s Eve. Joe Tash, a media specialist for San Diego County, knows that he and his wife, Ava, a nurse, have to work. Luckily, grandparents are going to baby-sit their 3-year-old daughter.

And besides, Tash adds, taking the part of calendar purists: “We’ll just have to have a celebration for the ‘real’ beginning of the millennium on Dec. 31, 2000.”

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Martin Miller can be reached by e-mail at martin.miller@latimes.com.