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Where Are the Employers?
I have a number of friends who I watched, on social media, crack open and fall to pieces. They are all working mothers and they all say the same thing: They cannot do this anymore. I cannot number the women I know who have left the workforce since the school year started. They were pushed to their breaking point for six months, but when the next academic year started and their kids weren’t going back to school anytime soon, they tapped out for the sake of every member of the family.
That’s not to say their husbands haven’t been pushed to the breaking point themselves, too. They have. Families are caught between a rock and a hard place. Every parent with a full-time job and school-aged children in public schools is cracking under the pressure.
How are they coping? Some, as I’ve mentioned, have become one-parent working households. Others are making more drastic moves, picking up and moving their entire life to Florida, Arizona or Texas.
In their efforts to get their home district schools reopened they are trying everything imaginable in their power. They are writing emails every day to the superintendent, protesting outside county buildings and giving testimony at school board hearings. Nothing matters, nothing changes. Parents have no power, and the unions and school districts know it.
In many municipalities, it seems life will never go back to normal, no matter what happens. There are already some unions, like in Fairfax County in Virginia or the city of Chicago where teachers unions are already admitting that their receiving the vaccine isn’t enough. In Chicago, one teacher admitted on CNN this week that basically nothing is.
CNN's Brianna Keilar lists all kinds of things Chicago has done to fulfill teachers union demands, so she asks teacher what else is left to reopen.
Teacher literally says, "COVID is still spreading in Chicago."
By that logic, you can stay closed for another 3, 5, 10 years? pic.twitter.com/rwz8ZgiNsB
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 1, 2021
As we’ve watched unions across the country dig in their heels and millions of American parents have become unwilling homeschoolers, I have one question: Where are their employers?
The initial epicenter of the outbreak, schools in Seattle have been closed the longest in the country. It is the operations hub for a number of powerful high tech companies, like Amazon and Microsoft. Given the schools are still closed with no end in sight with fighting over just some K-2 students being allowed back in-person, why is it that these companies haven’t used their significant political leverage on behalf of their employees to get kids back into schools, a proposition we finally admit is safe? Seattle families need an advocate, and who are more powerful than Amazon?
Fairfax county, a suburb of Washington DC, is no stranger to political gamesmanship, and yet, the federal government and consulting firms have left it to their employees to fight for in-person public schooling. Worse yet, the Biden administration continues to kowtow to the teacher’s unions.
It makes no sense: Employers are losing trained and valuable staff in droves. The productivity of those who remain is significantly diminished. The cost in lost hours and medical needs related to the stress is significant. So why are they leaving employees stranded and alone, forced to face the school reopening battle alone?
As we stare down the barrel of at least another calendar year of school closures, and no guarantee that public schooling will ever go back to what it was in February 2020, companies must accept this new reality and the impossible situation facing their employees. Moving forward, they have three options: They can strongly advocate for a return to normal schooling, using all of their influence and might to pressure municipalities to resume classes. Alternatively, they can make an announcement that there will be permanent full-time remote work so that parents can move to functioning states. The third option is more onerous, but would preserve office culture life going into the coming years: Move their headquarters (and staff) to states where schools are open. They must make clear that the current system cannot continue and if school districts will keep holding their employees hostage, they will give them the ability to take their property taxes elsewhere.
Individual parents and families have little leverage in the face of the power of teachers unions, they are truly at their whim. When large companies and businesses step in, the power dynamic shifts considerably. It’s no longer a David and Goliath matchup, and families (and their kids) have a hope of prevailing. Parents are in need of rescuing from the status quo, and it is painfully obvious that their kids’ schools won’t budge without a shove, and it’s time for corporate America to use its muscle to do so.
Are you sure about the effect of this? Certainly there are costs. But there are huge potential savings for employers if office space is downsized or closed. There is talk of paying less to employees living in cheaper locations. Some remote employees could be downgraded to independent contractors. Maybe, on balance, employers think they will come out ahead.
And these employers are as woke as can be. Is it worth it to them to buck the herd?
I thought one of the options you listed would be for the employers to start their own schools. The big ones could easily do it, but that would bring on the wrath of the unions. But so what? With each passing day the unions are alienating more people.
I find this troubling for some reason . . .
Hey, your article here got a nod from National Review!
I agree that this covid schools thing is completely off the rails ridiculous, but I’m just saying…
It does boggle my mind that parents go insane in the process of schooling their number 1-8 cadre of their own children in the home, whilst a teacher is to manage a 24+ clouder with grace, aplomb, and a trophy for all.
In a single classroom packed with 24+ desks, chairs, bodies, materials, equipment, coats, and bookbags. With a restroom down the hall.
And no booze. 😉
I would like to see data.
I hear the push back for reopen, but anecdotally in my area, my understanding is there is division on this topic, since many families are opting to continue with a full virtual option.
I do believe that parents who want their kids in school like it used to be are the most distressed and vocal, especially those in gr K-6.
Sadly, school districts did not examine resources and prioritize.
Clearly, K-6 are the most at risk, and should have been accommodated straight up with physical space and staff, back in September. Older students hopefully have a foundation to weather this storm.
And we learn more everyday.
There is no way to honor the CDC guidelines for social distancing in existing spaces without a reduction in class size, or acquisition of more space.
The irony, that teachers are offered smaller class sizes, but refuse to go to the classroom? We’ve been begging for smaller class sizes my entire lifetime.
But, the greatest damage has been done by the people who have astroturfed this covid hysteria into such a powerful fear.
These children are damaged. All of them. Many will recover, and thrive. But many will not.
These children will grow up, they will carry their fear, they will have children, and pass on the fear. We can expect to have consequences for a generation, maybe two.
But that is already happening and always has. One reason that Tech companies pay really well is that it is really expensive to live in Silicon Valley, or Seattle, but when they are living in ID, or WY, or ND, then what is the reason to pay such exorbitant salaries? There isn’t.