A revolutionary new law in San Francisco obligates developers of new downtown office projects to provide either space or money for day-care centers.
Under the law, developers must include space that can be used rent free by a non-profit day-care program (including those sponsored by employers), or they must contribute $1 per square foot of office space to a special city fund.
Providing day care will attract--or retain--good employees, proponents argue, and costs will be able to return to work more quickly after bearing or adopting children and will not lose valuable time worrying about, or finding, adequate care-taking arrangements.
"Last year, there were 10,000 requests for child care in San Francisco that couldn't be met," Supervisor Nancy Walker, sponsor of the measure, told my research associate, Ellen Hermanson. "Women can't afford day care so they can work, but they can't afford not to work, either."
Lack of adequate day care hurts employers and employees alike. Respondents to a survey conducted by Child Care Systems Inc., a consulting firm in Lansdale, Pa., indicated that they lost an average of eight days a year because of child-care problems.
Day care is an issue whose time has definitely come, and the need, already pressing, will grow only more acute.
"Two-thirds of new entrants to the work force will be women," notes Dana Friedman, senior research associate of the Work and Family Information Center of the Conference Board. "Eighty percent of those are of childbearing age, and 93 percent of that group will get pregnant."
Demographics, in short, will guarantee continued need for creative solutions to day-care problems.
Don't assume that day-care issues affect only female employees. "It's really a family issue," Miss Friedman stresses. "For example, roughly half the users of on-site day-care centers right now are men."
The family nature of the problem is dawning on Congress, too. A bill sponsored by Rep. Patricia Schroeder, Colorado Democrat, would require employers to grant a minimum 18-week unpaid leave to male or female employees following childbirth or adoption, or in the event of a seriously ill child. The employer would guarantee the employee's job for that period.
And other congressional proposals are being designed to create incentives for employers to provide or fund day-care programs.
Encouragement is clearly needed. Only about 2,500 companies nationwide underwrite some form of child care, according to Miss Friedman, of the Conference Board. Since the United States claims some 6 million employers, that's not many. Yet, it represents a 400-percent upsurge in three years.
Perhaps more important, that number includes some of the most visible, pacesetting corporations, including IBM, AT&T, Wang Laboratories, 3M,
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