An Open Letter to Employers -- Guest Post

An Open Letter To All Employers.

While I, myself, am not a mother, I work for mothers. Or, should we say in the past I have worked for them. Between daycare jobs and nannying jobs, moms have been my bosses for the majority of my work life. And there’s one thing that always comes up. And I do mean always. This is very much a solid happening. I get at least one call per month from a mother who needs me to come sit at home with her sick kid because the daycare won’t let them in and mom can’t stay home from work without being penalized in some way.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind filling in for mamas when it comes to sick littles. But it’s not the same thing. I have a friend who will remain anonymous, along with her company, who could still lose her job even with a doctor’s note. Now, I get it … to a point. You need your workers so that your company can be productive. But how productive is it when you have four workers show up with various flus and pneumonias and other contagious illnesses that they are now passing around to each other. Nobody can ever get well because the moment their immune system tries to make a comeback, it gets hit by another germ.

As some of you know, little kids are germ factories. If one gets sick, they’re pretty much all going to get sick. You want to know why? Because they’re too little to understand how to taking universal precautions. I mean, let’s be real here - there are plenty of adults who don’t follow universal precautions themselves. How can we expect a child under the age of say … 5 to be able to take them. Sure, as daycare teachers we do our best to sanitize everything every chance we get. We seclude the sickies at naptime away from the healthy kids in hopes of creating a barrier. We even wash their hands and faces as much as we can.

But that’s not the problem. No, the problem lies with you, dear Employer. Because there are parents who have such strict sick day/personal day/time off policies that they will dose their feverish child up before bringing them to school. Do you know how long Motrin lasts? 6 hours. That means that if they drop their child off at 8am, we won’t find out until said child wakes up from their nap that they’re running a fever. And guess what? A fever masked by medicine doesn’t mask the germs they have. They’re going to make other children sick.

At the age of 28, I came down with a virus usually only seen in toddlers and infants because so many of my toddlers had it, that I just couldn’t escape it. And even though it was my own illness and not a child’s, it cost me my job because of how sick I was. My Hand, Foot, and Mouth turned into bronchitis which lead to me still running a fever. The doctor would allow me to go back to work and DCYF’s attitude is “well, you better be in ratio” so they had to let me go and find someone that could help keep them in ratio.

And again, I go back. I really do understand that you need your workers there. I understand that if they don’t do their jobs, you can’t do yours, and your company fails. But there has to be something that can be done. Leeways that can be put into place. For office jobs - let your secretaries and clerks and accountants come in on a Saturday to get work from the week done. Yes, I know, you’re going to have to pay them, but the day(s) they took off during the week were either sick time or personal days and in a lot of jobs, if you don’t have any hours logged, you don’t get paid.

If your employee can work from home, please let them. Maybe it’s not the most professional thing in the world, but it is the best of both worlds. Baby isn’t Patient Zero at daycare and while Baby is napping, mom (or dad, but I see this happening more with the moms) can get her work done. There has to be a solution that you, the Employer, can come up with that will make you, your employee, and the sick wee bairn (sorry, I went Scottish for a moment) all happy at the same time.

It’s tough out there these days. I understand that better than anyone. There’s so many unemployed people and not enough jobs to go around. So you, the Employer, can give the ultimatum. “If you can’t do this job, I’ll find someone else who can.” But you know what. Stop for a moment and think about that. Think about your employee. Will you really be able to find someone as good as them? Aren’t they with you company because they do good work and you like how they get along with the rest of the staff?

In the end, it comes down to people. We have to stop looking at people as employees and nothing else. We have to start appreciating their whole. Their value to their employer, their family, and to themselves. I bet more people wouldn’t need anti-anxiety drugs if we could all start treating each other like humans and less like cogs in a machine. A little understanding, in my experience, is going to go a very, very long way.

Kindness is free. Sprinkle it wherever you may go.

...

Bridget Frazier:

A twenty-something young woman who, over the years, has come to realize that hopes and dreams don't always coincide with reality. Take a journey through what it means to accept what life has given you, to be happy with the blessing bestowed, all while mourning the loss of dreams once passed.

The woman at the door

The girls and I had just gotten back from their capoeira practice and were settling down to read when the doorbell rang. The puppy made a break for it, running right into the young woman's flowered tennis shoes.

"Can you grab him?" I asked frantically, before even letting her say hello.

She obliged, and when I saw he was safe, I looked at her properly. She was  nearly a foot shorter than me, wearing pink and purple eye shadow, and clearly freezing. She started in on her solicitor's spiel, but before she could make out a sentence, I asked her inside.

There she tried to continue to sell us the $100 book and magazine subscriptions I couldn't afford, but kept interrupting herself to pet the dog or coo at the kids. She was a nice woman who didn't really believe in her cause, and I soon saw why.

She was on the ground floor of some sort of pyramid scheme, where they sell subscriptions for points not unlike the school fundraisers. Only instead of a bike at the end of the long point tunnel, there was the promise of not having to walk door-to-door for 12 hours a day, of moving up to training the poor souls who would have to do it next. She needed 22,000 points to get there. She had earned 22 the day she spoke to me, and it was edging on the last hour of her shift.

Making matters worse, it wasn't some gungho college student full of pipe dreams and lofty ideals and boot straps for miles. This particular organization makes it a point to enlist the work of those in dire need. Those living on the streets or unable to find any other work.

They make it sound like that island in Pinocchio, all sunshine and food and warm beds. And to some extent, it is. The sellers sleep in hotel beds each night and get $25 for food a day, even, the woman told me, when they didn't 'earn' it through their sales. For the most part, though, the proceeds from the magazine sales went toward that food stipend and the room and board, and the buses which carted these people away from home, away from any support they may have had. It comes out of their commission. Unless, of course, they meet quota. Which hardly anybody does.

She has two kids hundreds of miles from here, in Key West. She wants to go back, but if she leaves this 'job' she has to find her own way home with money she hasn't been able to earn. She's stuck here until she saves enough to get out. Will she ever?

No one likes cold callers, no one buys magazines, certainly not for double their retail value, and no one should be forced to walk the streets in the freezing dark for a commission they'll never be able to get. How much of an opportunity is this opportunity, really?

She was wearing only a light sweater. The kind you'd wear to a Hampton tea party if it was going to be 65 degrees. It was below freezing, this day, even in Florida. I gave her some coffee and we talked for a while. She wasn't allowed to take donations, not the money itself or even turn it in for points. She could only sell the really high-priced magazines, and I couldn't afford them. I could have given her $20 without going in the red this month, but she wasn't allowed to take it.

She had another hour left to walk in the dark when she left us. On a whim, I reached into my coat closet and fetched her one of my older news television jackets. Meant to withstand the Connecticut winter, it would break the wind and keep her warm at least. She took it gratefully, putting it on immediately.

The whole scene made me feel odd. Should I have invited a stranger into my home with little kids around? Should I have spoken to her so frankly about her situation and how she had come to be there in front of them? Should I have given her $20 cash anyway? Was it okay that I gave her a coat? She hadn't asked for charity, she was simply trying to do her job. Had I made things better or worse for her with my skepticism, when I outright told her I thought they were taking advantage of her? Will she be okay? Will she make it home in time for her daughter's sixth birthday? Will she be able to get her a gift, which was her main goal with this magazine selling gig? Is giving people the sense and hope that they are moving forward enough validation for a system that seems to exploit rather than serve?

I don't know any of the answers. I just know that getting out of a world with no opportunities is nearly impossible, and even those trying their hardest may never be able to do it.

And I don't know what to do about that.

What Does Corporations Are People Mean?

In light of the recent SCOTUS ruling on Hobby Lobby and other corporate giants being allowed to deny women birth control within their health coverage plans because it goes against their religious beliefs, I thought a primer on the laws surrounding corporations as people was in order.

Slate does a good job covering some of the bases of this particular case, but let's sum up:

- Eric Posner, writing for Slate, reminds us that the word "people" in terms of corporations is a sort of legalese short cut--never a good idea, in my opinion, to mince inexact words when describing the law.

- This 'artificial person' (going back to the 1700s definition) has certain rights: property ownership and contractual rights, to be specific. As such an entity, it is responsible in the courts as itself, which protects the shareholders. In other words, the buck stops (or is supposed to stop) at the corporation because the Supreme Court went ahead and made it its own thing. This, in turn, protects the owners as well, because when Hobby Lobby (or any corporation) fails financially, the actual people behind the artificial person do not suffer the immense losses involved in billion-dollar industries.

- Until recently, according to the New York Times, the "Supreme Court, in business cases, has held that “incorporation’s basic purpose is to create a legally distinct entity, with legal rights, obligations, powers, and privileges different from those of the natural individuals who created it, who own it, or whom it employs.”"

- Until, of course, the Citizen's United case, where, as Slate says, the justices based their ruling not on corporations as individuals with rights but on the real individuals behind the corporations and their rights as a collective group.

The ruling this week was simply an extension of this incredibly garbled, incredibly unethical ruling.

What we are looking at now is Hobby Lobby owners asserting that their religious beliefs as individual people behind a corporation, should be a basis for how that corporation is ruled upon in a court of law. They are, in essence, making themselves responsible for the actions of Hobby Lobby, intertwining Hobby Lobby as an artificial person with them as real people. They are saying they want to become Hobby Lobby, so that they can use the business to push their agenda.

And, in doing this, they also want to maintain the separation of themselves from their business when it comes to protecting their own assets monetarily. And the Court said yes.

Nutshell: In ruling that Hobby Lobby can restrict women's health care, the Court has muddled two entities--the real person owner and the fake person corporation--giving the owner/corporation mutant all the protections of both--free speech, freedom of religion, freedom to engage in contracts, freedom to sue (as either entity), freedom to own property.

In doing so, the Court has neglected to relook at those protections on a grand scale, so that the owners of Hobby Lobby could turn around in bankruptcy and say "just kidding, we aren't Hobby Lobby, we're the people behind it. Don't punish us." And the Court would be like, "yup, you're good."

This week, we have seen the elevation of big businesses and their owners. We have seen the crippling demise of the worker, in real time.

Keep in mind, the average Hobby Lobby employee makes less than $9 an hour.

Who really needs protecting here?

And who is the bad guy?

Honestly, in this case, I blame our Supreme Court. Someone needs to delve into this corporation person thing and straighten it the hell out.


For more on how this impacts women and society, check this post out by Life, Love, Liturgy.

Sarah Galo writes about her personal struggle and how birth control is necessary for women in Relevant Magazine.

Bree Davis writes about the problem with the double standard on health coverage in Denver's Westword Blog.

A gripping personal tale here at Anatomy of a Mother.

Sarah Seltzer writes about how this ruling sets women into a second-class status for Forward.

Claire O'Connor, meanwhile, is stirring up dissent amongst commenters over what the decision actually means in the long haul, over at Forbes Magazine.

Raising Kvell has a piece about the effects of this decision on women.

Leslie Schwartz writes about the effects of this decision on the children, over at Build the School.