Single people of the world, Unite!
Family oriented policies in law firms are becoming a greater and greater trend. Some firms offer in-house daycare services, most all provide maternity leave (as required by law), some provide paternity leave, and many are beginning to provide parenting tracks (wherein an individual can work a reduced schedule to have time to parent while simply prolonging the time until they make partner). These policies were the topic of our discussion in my Jurisprudence class this morning, and apparently, I’m largely alone in my stance on such policies.
I find the policies to be largely repugnant and a wholesale discrimination against people who do not have, or choose not to have, families. For every person who takes off time for work in order to parent their children, other employees must work harder to pick up the slack of their missing comrade. These other employees do not get any benefit for working harder, while their missing colleague gets to be both a parent and get credit as if they were still working. If the remaining employees do not pick up the slack of the missing parent, then they see their own salaries fall due to the worsened situation of the firm. How is that fair?
In a situation where the firm provides in-house daycare services, or such, the analysis is far more direct. Most offices follow a ‘total compensation package’ approach, in which individuals will be paid less if the company provides more benefits (the theory being that it all evens out). In other words, if the company now provides dental insurance where before it did not, employees should expect a small reduction in pay to make up for that new added benefit.
However, for individuals without kids, the benefit is one that they will not use, and yet they end up subsidizing the child-care of other colleagues in return for no benefit. If you want to have a family, do it on your own time. Making the company accommodate your outside of work activities by giving you work-time benefits and advantages not only is harmful to the company but unjust and unfair to those who must pay the price for your leisure and entertainment activities.
It’s not right, and it needs to stop.
posted by The Academian | 10:16 AM
4 Comments:
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
not fair? Seriously.
MMD, There are times when I wish I understood the things you say, but they aren't ever direct enough for me to wrap my mind around. Are you suggesting that someone has led me somewhere (or showed me something) that I simply am not getting? Are you suggesting that having shown my unaccountable brilliance to corporate America that it will ignore the wisdom of my teachings? Are you suggesting that individuals who make use of these programs could now see the error of forcing everyone else to subsidize their outside-of-work lives, but won't care and will continue to use the programs?
I think I have a good grasp on the colloquial meaning of the homily, buy I'm just not seeing which of its immediate applications you might intend.
Anonymous? Is this Bob again? I can't tell if you are being sarcastic there. If I said those words, it seems like they would probably have a hint of sarcasm, but since I really don't know you, I can't tell whether that is the sort of thing you would say sarcastically or not.
I still maintain (and without any argument as to why it is wrong will continue to maintain) that making everyone in a company work harder to provide benefits for a select few is wrong. Having the ability to get special benefits because of a person's outside-of-work activities isn't fair to the rest of us who don't get that ability. I mean, think of it this way:
Let's say you worked at a business where you got health insurance. Your pay each month was docked a little to pay for a better health insurance package for one of your co-workers. There isn't anything special about this co-worker. She hasn't worked there longer than you, and she's not sick or anything. She just gets an extra benefit and everybody else subsidizes that benefit for her. Wouldn't you find that a little unfair?
If the company wanted to provide her with the benefit, why not provide it to everybody? The same can go with the family-policies, too. If I'm in a firm, I can easily imagine activities I would like to do that would conflict with my work schedule, but it isn't likely that the firm would let me only work 60% of the time so that I could go do those activities instead. I wouldn't be allowed to go volunteering time at a hospital, building houses for the homeless, or helping with natural disaster relief, but people with kids get to leave work for their kids, no questions asked.
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