Working moms face dilemma
Women are forced to choose between jobs, making sure kids learn
The start of the virtual school year has been a struggle for Patricia Reveles, a pharmacy technician at a CVS in Los Angeles, whose daughter is in fourth grade.
Reveles, 49, is single and has long relied on her mother to help with child care.
But she realized during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic that remote learning required more tech savvy than her mother could provide. Her daughter, 9, needed an adult to help her when the internet went out or her iPad froze, Reveles said.
So Reveles recently asked CVS, where she has worked for more than 20 years, to reduce her hours to 24 per week so that she could be home during the day to help her daughter while allowing her to keep some of the benefits that come with being a full-time employee.
“I like my job and I am thankful for it, but I am a single parent, and I can’t be there for my daughter,” she said.
A CVS spokesman said the company was working with Reveles’ union to try to accommodate her request.
As the pandemic wears on and inperson school begins across the country, women working in retail say they are being forced to choose between keeping their jobs and making sure their children can keep up with remote learning.
According to a study last month by the Census Bureau, women were three times more likely than men to have left their job because of child care issues during the pandemic.
But the inflexibility of retail work schedules — where shifts can vary widely week to week and employees have little choice but to take the hours they are given — make the pressure on those employees particularly acute.
The retail industry, the second-biggest private-sector employer in the country after health care, has been roiled by the pandemic, with millions out of work. Women made up nearly half of the 15.7 million workers in retail before the pandemic, but they accounted for 65% of the industry’s job losses between February and June, according to a report from the center.
Those who have kept their jobs were heralded as heroes and rewarded with bonuses and temporary raises during the early months of the pandemic. However, many of these same retail workers find themselves struggling to fulfill endless parenting obligations while hanging onto jobs that seem increasingly precarious in a weak economy.
Federal and state governments have offered little or no child-care relief to working parents.
But employees, union leaders and labor experts say none of that government support has motivated companies to find ways to accommodate workers who also need to supervise their children during online school.
Amazon is offering 10 days of subsidized child care, asking employees to cover no more than $35 a day for day-care centers and $5 an hour for in-house babysitters. The benefit ends next month.
Rachel Belz, who was an Amazon warehouse worker in West Deptford, New Jersey, said she needed more coverage.
Before she left her job this month, she was ending her shift at 5 a.m. and then getting only a few hours of sleep before having to get up to watch her son, who is in kindergarten.
“I am not asking you to take care of my kid,’” said Belz, 32, who is a member of United for Respect, a worker advocacy group. “I am asking you to make it easier for me to take care of my kid.”