Winning a backup day care benefit could theoretically help womenmove up in a company where only one woman is on an influentialsenior management team that reports directly to Bezos. (Photo:Shutterstock)

Amazon has long resisted pleas to provide a backup day carebenefit for employees, even though other tech companies haveoffered the perk for years. Now a group comprising hundreds ofworking moms is waging a campaign to persuade founder and ChiefExecutive Officer Jeff Bezos that providing help for parents dealing with flu outbreaks,school closures and other emergencies is not simply humane but goodfor the company, too.

The group has been collecting anecdotal evidence to show how alack of day care support can derail the careers oftalented women who otherwise might be promoted to more senior jobs,according to an email reviewed by Bloomberg. Among the accounts: anAmazon.com Inc. manager tired of seeing colleagues quit becausethey can't find childcare in one of the country's fastest-growingcities and a recruiter frustrated when top talent leaves forcompanies that offer working parents more support.

Related: Unique benefits to recruit and retain femaleemployees

The women, who belong to a group of more than 1,800 employeescalled the Momazonians, are scheduled to meet with senior managersin coming weeks to make their case. They want the company toprovide backup day care for those times when regular childcarearrangements fall through. They will also urge human resources tostart collecting data about day care challenges—via interviews withincoming and departing employees—to eliminate the management blindspot and prevent such problems from festering any longer.

Activists at Amazon

The campaign is the latest example of employee activism in the tech industry, whichhas been roiled in recent months by standoffs between workers andmanagement over everything from Pentagon contracts to bindingarbitration.

If the Momazonians succeed, they will have helped engineer amajor cultural shift at Amazon, where the needs of workers take aback seat to Bezos's goal of satisfying the hallowed needs of thecustomer. Winning a backup day care benefit could theoreticallyhelp women move up in a company where only one woman is on aninfluential senior management team that reports directly toBezos.

“Everyone wants to act really tough and pretend they don't havehuman needs,” says Kristi Coulter, who worked in various roles atAmazon for almost 12 years and observed that many senior executiveshad stay-at-home wives. “You don't want to be the one to stepforward and say 'I'm a mom with kids and I may not be assingle-mindedly devoted to my career as everyone else.' They're alltrying to assimilate to this male-dominated culture.”

In an emailed statement, Amazon said it provides valuablebenefits to its 250,000 U.S. workers, including health benefitsthat begin on the first day, flexible paid leave for new parentsand discounts at day care centers around the country.

“When creating benefits, we focus on efforts that can scale tohelp the largest number of individuals, and work in partnershipwith our employees to ensure that what we build provides meaningfulsupport,” the company said.

The benefits of competing for talent

A tight labor market has pushed benefits to the forefront,making them a powerful recruiting and retention tool, especially inthe competitive technology industry. The issue of paid parentalleave, which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says is availableto only 17 percent of U.S. workers, has gotten most of theattention. But the focus has started to shift to childcare, whichcan cost almost as much as rent or college tuition.

Amazon has several family-friendly policies. Employees can takepaid parental leave all at once or spread it out over time to suittheir needs. They can share it with a spouse or partner notemployed by Amazon who misses work due to pregnancy and childbirth.Parents returning after childbirth can work part-time for up toeight weeks to smooth the transition. Amazon reimburses motherstraveling for work for their breast milk shipping expenses.

But many Amazon moms say a missing link is backup day care.Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Facebook Inc. and Google parentAlphabet Inc. all provide backup day care benefits. As millennialsage into parenthood, family-friendly benefits have consistentlyranked as the most coveted perks. Amazon differs from other bigtech companies in that its workforce includes software engineers inSeattle as well as warehouse employees in Kentucky. Still, backupday care as a benefit is moving beyond white-collar office workers.Starbucks Corp. last year introduced the perk for baristas.Meanwhile, universal childcare is emerging as a potent politicalcampaign issue.

Childcare is directly connected to the gender pay gap inAmerica, a complex social issue that can perpetuate itself whenfamilies decide who should stay home from work to care for ailingchildren, says Katharine Zaleski, co-founder of thegender-diversity recruiting firm PowerToFly. Since most men in theU.S. earn more than women, she says, moms are more likely to stayhome when children are sick since the loss of the father's incomeis more likely to be detrimental to the family budget. Providingbackup day care helps protect women from having to choose betweentheir children and their careers, Zaleski says.

“It sends a message about creating an inclusive workplace wherewomen can thrive, because the company recognizes this undue burdenhas historically been placed on women,” she says.

Bezos holds steady

Bezos has seldom championed social issues. Amazon followed thepack in 2015 when it expanded maternity leave to 20 weeks fromeight and allowed paternity leave for the first time. The companyin October pledged to pay all of its warehouse workers at least $15an hour, after presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and ElizabethWarren held out Amazon workers on food stamps as an example of theneed for living wage protections. Amazon in the past two months hasadded two women to its male-dominated board of directors, followingyears of criticism from activists.

Still, Bezos isn't easily persuaded to enhance benefits simplybecause they would help staff, according to people familiar withthe company's internal deliberations. He is notoriously frugal,insisting that employees fly coach and eschewing the free mealscommon at other tech companies and instead giving away bananas fromlittle kiosks around the campus. This is why, the people say, it'smore effective to argue that denying the benefit hurts the bottomline by increasing recruiting costs.

Several years ago a group of Amazon employees pushed the companyto provide gender reclassification surgery as part of its healthcare package. They initially argued that providing such a benefitwould project an inclusive workplace image and help recruit toptalent, according to a person involved in the campaign. Humanresources advised the group to instead argue it would help thecompany save money, the person says. Subsidizing genderreclassification cost less than recruiting a senior engineer,making it a financial issue rather than a social one. “This wasnever a decision about money,” Amazon said in an emailed statement.“It was a decision to do the right thing for our employees.”

Studies demonstrate that mothers continue to bear the brunt ofchildcare responsibilities and companies that provide day caresupport can reduce employee absenteeism by as much as 30 percent.That's the kind of evidence that can resonate at Amazon, but theplight of working mothers is largely hidden, according to currentand former employees who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some don't mention having children or display family photos ondesks in fear of being labeled a “distracted mom” unable to tackleimportant projects. Others are loath to be the first to leave eventhough the day care facility is about to close. Some mask theirobligations. The vomiting, feverish child at school becomes a“last-minute conflict” in the meeting cancellation email toco-workers. Some new mothers don't seek promotions, doubting they'dget the support needed to take on a new role. In Seattle techcircles, friends of parents taking jobs at Amazon often joke: Leavea photo at home for your children so they don't forget who youare.

A cultural issue

The company's unrelenting demands created a pattern in which menwith stay-at-home wives advanced to leadership positions and womenoften see their careers languish or they leave, the employeessay.

One former Amazon worker says she arrived at 7 a.m. each day toavoid the distracting sounds of her mostly male colleagues shootingNerf guns and bouncing tennis balls off the wall. She was warnedabout the “bad optics” of leaving before her colleagues, so oftenstayed until 7 p.m. She spoke with HR about her difficulties andsays they suggested she start looking for another job if theculture wasn't a good fit.

Many managers see “butts in seats” as a sign of a well-rundepartment, making work-life balance a challenge for parents withconflicts, the people say. One former Amazon worker says she hadflexibility to work from home and other Amazon mothers who didn'twould bring their children to her house on snow days or whenteachers went on strike, making her place a de facto day carecenter.

Liz Swanby, a seven-year Amazon employee who oversees shippinghubs in the Midwest, says the company has supported her through twopregnancies, including one with complications. Amazon helped herplan in advance how to use the benefits and adjusted them asneeded.

“My mind was not on work whatsoever and it was super helpful,”says Swanby, whose wife stays home with the couple's son, 3, anddaughter, 2. “Amazon does a lot to support families.”

Despite Amazon's reputation for frugality, it will occasionallydig deep to project an image of a hip, forward-thinking company.The new Seattle headquarters has rooftop dog parks and a tree houseinside plant-filled spheres where employees can wax creative. Themoms group says it's time for the company to keep up with the restof the tech industry by giving working parents the flexibility andsupport they need to balance professional and family demands. Somemoms say backup day care would be especially beneficial forhouseholds with two parents working outside the home.

“The childcare topic was quickly identified as one of ourbiggest priorities,” states an email that circulated recently amongthe Momazonians. “We assert that a key to increasing diversity ofwomen is to prioritize parent-friendly benefits and policies.”

— With assistance by Dina Bass, Mark Gurman, Gerrit DeVynck, and Sarah Frier

Read more: 

• 2018: The year of Amazon
• Parental biases are different for single moms anddads
• Microsoft, fighting class action, acknowledgesgender imbalances in tech industry

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