It finally happened. A court of law has ruled that caring for your children is more important than prime time TV. Earlier this week a Canadian federal court upheld a human rights tribunal's finding that employers have an obligation to try to accommodate employee needs as they pertain to childcare. That means if your boss can reasonably let you work the day shift so you can drop your kid at daycare, then she has to.
Note, however, this quote from the Globe and Mail article linked to above, "The ruling also leaves the onus on employees to prove that they have made reasonable efforts to sort out their family obligations before requesting help from their employers," Rudner said. This isn't about every parent trumping every non-parent. It is designed to protect those who would otherwise be forced to leave their job.
Before I go any further, let me fully disclose my biases. Not only am I a parent, I am also a night owl. I worked shift work in the Telus Mobility call centre for a brief stint before I had kids and I could not for the life of me understand why young, childless people made such a fuss about working until 9 p.m. You know that means you don't have to be in until noon, right? And you get to skip rush hour altogether? And you can still meet friends for a drink or whatever? I just didn't get it. I still don't.
But I don't have to get it to understand why it might seem unfair for one employee who does the exact same job as another to get first dibs on shifts just because she has a kid. I mean, imagine if I had to start coming in at 8 a.m.? Injustice! It seems unfair, but that doesn't mean it's not right.
It's common decency, for one thing. I once worked lunches as a server with a woman who had to pick her daughter up from school at 3:30. This meant that I always had to put in the grunt hours between 3:00 and 5:00 when you clean and prep and make next to no tips and she never did. Not once did it ever even occur to me (or to anyone else) to complain. She had to leave at 3:00 just like I could only work two shifts a week because I was in school and the owner had to yell at everyone because he was an asshole. It's life. You deal with it.
Having children may be a choice, but taking care of them is not. Juggling work and childcare is hard enough for working parents on a typical schedule. (Sick days and PA days and doctor's appointments and school breaks all have to be covered somehow.) But how would a single parent even go about finding child care to cover shift work? Daycares have set hours and round-the-clock nanny care is absurdly expensive. A parent's need to work around child care limitations does trump someone else's desire for a 9-to-5 lifestyle.
OK, I lied. It's not a choice. I mean, even if I employ my power of hypothetical thought to its utmost and imagine that I could have opted to ignore my own biological imperative to procreate -- even if I, personally, could have chosen otherwise -- somebody has to have the children. Reproduction is necessary for our political, economic and cultural continuation. Who is going to write all the TV shows when you get old if people stop having children?! God, think about it. (Oh yeah, there's that social security problem too. That would have been smart to bring up.)
One more thing. What is the primary factor holding women back from equal footing in the workforce? Motherhood, that's what. This is not to say there aren't other factors (like blatant sexism in the tech industry, for example), but this is the biggest. Women take more time off from their career when their children are young, they work shorter hours and they choose less demanding career paths so they can be there for their families. For some women this is a choice they want to make. For many others, this is a choice they have to make.
So bravo, Canadian federal court! Bravo Justice Mandamin! This is a huge step forward for Canadian families and an even bigger one for women everywhere.
This post originally appeared on Playground Confidential.
Follow Rebecca Cuneo Keenan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rebeccakeenan
The smart people? The ones who choose to have kids? They also DO have the onus of figuring out how to take care of them. It boggles my mind that this sort of ruling was actually handed down. Parents face all kinds of challenges, but there's also *two* of you which is supposed to make the work easier. So instead, you expect everyone else to accommodate you for decency stake but fairness be damned? I don't think so.
Also? You can bet that any employer who started favoring every unsavory character who managed to pop out a baby over a single co-worker will have experience a turn around problem. If you can't handle *that* job with *that* shift then do what millions of us do every day. Find a new job.
This ruling will have a negative affect for women on the job front & a very positive one for men. When a hiring decision comes down to being between a man or woman, this ruling could very well be the deciding factor in who actually gets hired.
It's important to note the ruling was based on very extenuating circumstances. The CBSA already accommodated employees on other grounds, they themselves had already set a precedence. This ruling won't apply to employer's who don't already accommodate their employee's in a similar fashion.
Equally important is this case had to go through a human rights tribunal & not the courts. Had there been any legal basis for this case it would have gone through the courts to begin with.
Having children comes with sacrifices to be made by the parents. Asking co-workers to accept part of that load is asking too much. Non-parents already pay taxes for schools and such that they will never access.
The safe political mantra, "Families First" seems to imply 'back-of-the line' for non-parents. It is time to review if our society needs to be promoting and rewarding people for having a lot of children. No politician will touch this, but we sorely need to update our thinking.
(Axes out! Start swinging, folks!)
I only need them for a few hours a month - just enough to keep up appearances.
Let's face it, for some having babies is an industry. It comes with paid parental leave, social assistance, and a host of social 'rights.' So imposing an obligation on employers to accommodate 'convenient hours is 'nannyism' gone mad!
Can we just call a spade a spade here, there is a certain social glorification about having children. It doesn't make sense but then again, not allowing two consenting adult men or women to get married doesn't make much sense either, yet it's still upheld in many states.
I think it's ridiculous how self-righteous people get about having kids. It's a choice, all the power to you but don't pretend it's anything else. Don't pretend you're providing a service for future generations that goes above and beyond. We all contribute in our own ways.
And there's kids who need looking after.
We should be able to make some accomodation.
But I guess thats not always gonna be fair.
To anybody.
cant get childcare, then perhaps you should have thought of that before you had children.
as for a national daycare scheme, now you want all the good shifts AND expect the rest of us to pay for your choices on top of that?
nice try, isnt going to happen. even chretien saw that it would be a bottomless pit for money.