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Staples Co-Founder: Allowing Women To Breastfeed At Work Costs Jobs
Guess I'll be shopping at Office Depot instead...
Staples co-founder Tom Stemberg is speaking out against a serious threat to economic recovery and job creation: breastfeeding moms.
Stemberg, a longtime supporter of Republican policies and candidates like Mitt Romney, complained recently that President Obama?s health care reform law hurts businesses by requiring them to provide what he dubbed ?lactation chambers? for new moms who need to breastfeed at work:
Tom Stemberg, co-founder of mega-office supply chain Staples is questioning an Obamacare provision that discourages job creation by dictating employers funnel their capital into lactation chambers.
?Do you want [farming retailer] Tractor Supply to open stores or would you rather they take their capital and do what Obamacare and its 2,700 pages dictates ? which is to open a lactation chamber at every single store that they have?? he asked.
?I?m big on breastfeeding; my wife breastfed,? Stenberg added. ?I?m all for that. I don?t think every retail store in America should have to go to lactation chambers, which is what Obamacare foresees.
Stemberg was presumably referring to provisions in the Affordable Care Act that require employers to give lactating mothers ?reasonable break time? to nurse their child, as well as ?a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public?? The place they provide for new moms does not have to be a dedicated room as long as it?s private and can be called into use when female employees need it.
Stemberg, who has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Romney?s campaign and SuperPAC, added that repealing the health care law should be at the top of the next president?s ?to-do? list.
As of early January, the Labor Department had already cited 23 companies, including Starbucks and McDonald?s stores, for violating the new protections for breastfeeding employees.
Re: Staples Co-Founder: Allowing Women To Breastfeed At Work Costs Jobs
I'm not saying it's right at all, just that I can see many large employers deciding the fine is cheaper than providing a lactation area for the 1-2 pregnant women they may have in 5 or so years (some companies).
I have worked in many a retail location and I can't imagine pumping there. It should be more accessible, but I don't know how logistically it can be. I'm thinking of the places I've worked where we had to change into our uniforms in a wide open stock room as there wasn't even a bathroom in the store.
I'm a wedding photographer and I occasionally have a second photographer with me. If she was lactating, we're on location all day---where would be best for those moms to pump? I don't have any kids, just trying to imagine the logistics.
Well it only applies to companies with more than 50 employees, so you as a photographer wouldn't have to provide a lactation room for your second photographer (assuming that photographer is even your direct employee rather than a contractor).
I'm sorry, but how hard it is essentially to take a closet, add a desktop to it, and give the ladies an electrical outlet and a sign on the door? ...for a place like a giant retail store such as staples.
For a place like Staples it shouldn't be too hard. For a bunch of mall stores, asking the mall itself to build some out of existing storage space shouldn't be hard either. I think the trick will come for smaller places. If you're a company-owned Starbucks in a tiny strip mall with no way to annex more space and your back of house space is really limited, it may be extravagantly expensive compared with revenue to run electrical and close off a space without violating the ADA or safety zoning or OSHA. If you have to build a space as big as a handicapped bathroom, essentially, so that it can be used by someone in a wheelchair, and you can't steal so much space from the rest of the back office that your aisles are too narrow or you've blocked access to the only window or emergency exit, you could run into some significant remodeling questions in a lot of small stores run by mid-sized companies.
That doesn't mean it's not a sound goal, but it does mean the impact is worth talking about. Where it's just a matter of putting a chair, a lamp and a plug into a closet (or just installing blinds on the manager's office and locks on the file cabinets and the office door), it's a no brainer. Where it's a $75,000 remodeling project at a location with a gross profit of $150K and no lactating employees, it raises some questions worth asking.
Of course it costs jobs. Staples has 1600 US locations. Lets say renovations to provide a lactation room cost $2000 per store, which I would argue is probably very low given permit costs, etc., and doesn't even take into account the ongoing costs of rent, opportunity cost for using the space in other ways, etc. That's 3.2 million dollars in compliance costs for a single business for this single regulation.
It's naive to pretend we can pass a law like this with no economic costs whatsoever.
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God bless, a private place that's not a bathroom that females can go into does not require a lot. They don't have a breakroom? Or some kind of room that no one is using for the one (maybe 2 people) to use uninterrupted a couple times a day for a few months. Please. It's not asking that much. Every place I've ever worked including the grocery store I worked at in college has something. No one asked them to build a first class dining lounge.
ETA: I could see somewhere like Starbucks having a space issue, but Staples? Sorry, no. And there must be an office somewhere in many establishments that can be shared use temporarily, right?
Staples of all stores protesting this is ridiculous. Staples sells cubicle dividers, for crying out loud, and all of their stores have back areas: they could really easily divide off a space for a pumping room as needed.
The issue as far as large chains with small individual retail shops is more complex, although many of those do have at least one office space that could certainly function as a pumping area if needed. As far as I can tell, the stores aren't going to have to revamp every location (the law doesn't require they need the room just in case, just as needed), so I would actually wonder what the total overall cost to the corporation really would be.
My office is an open top cubicle with a locking door. There is no way I would pump in here. The entire office would hear it.
This sounds more like a matter of blinds and door locks that building whole new rooms.
And this CEO isn't even considering that he may get value from having these women who are already trained able to continue working or come back to work sooner.
Exactly
At my last employer I did have a lactation room in the huge building but if I needed a quick fix (lol) our office had a private closet that locked that I had permission to use. I was happy to have the option. It doesn't have to be difficult.
It is not that hard. Most employees are giving breaks also right? So I don't buy that a woman taking 15 minutes to pump will hurt job production. They probably already have that 15 minute break worked into their schedule.
Even a Starbucks would have a stockroom. And few enough employees that they can only take breaks one at a time anyway. The pumper could use the stockroom.
It is naive to think that there is no cost to this regulation.
That doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do.
"Costs businesses" doesn't always get to be the trump card. I'm sorry. Sometimes there is value to society and to employees that exceeds the cost to the business.
Oh, Im sure he has thought of that but he may also think that driving away new mothers isnt such a bad thing because for entry level untrained labor, he can replace them with new employees that wont need time off for doctors appointments or other time off to care for their new child.
Just wanted to say to be successful (typically) a pumping mom needs to pump everytime the baby has a bottle so every 2-3 hrs for the first several months (DD was an every 3 hr eater until 10 months) so it may mean more than the normal number of breaks and since it can take 30 minutes to fully pump using a manager's office might not work in terms of practicality.
I do think specifying an appropriate place other than a bathroom is a good thing, as long as it doesn't get to specific. Like the starbucks at our Target if they could set up a joint space in the target backroom that would work.
Stop talking common sense, missus. All that matters is money and whether multi-millionares are making enough of it.
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Yeah but that usually equals out to a morning break, lunch, afternoon break. From my very elementary understanding of employee law isn't that already standard for an 8 hour shift? This is what I did for my pumping schedule. And even if it takes more than 15 minutes (it never did for me but I recognize that it might for others) then just give them a couple more minutes.
We give people smoke breaks all the time. Now of course those aren't a half hour break but it can't be that hard logistically to allow a mother to use her break for pumping.
I'd be willing to bet this man's wife was a SAHM - so it's great he's all for breastfeeding because his wife nursed, but quite another thing to support working women in their efforts.
I disagree - in most places, particularly with 50 or more employees, there is going to be a break-room, there is going to be at least one office. It costs nothing to stick a sign on the door so a mother can nurse. I'll agree that for some mother's (like hourly wage-earners at Staples), the store would have a minor loss in productivity. But for realz - nobody is going to choose to be a working mom and nurse and pump to get out of 30 minutes of work unless they're insane. It is the single most challenging thing I've ever done. I'm buying myself an new expensive handbag from DH when I make it one year.
Exactly.
I think volenti is spot on. I'm sorry, but a place like Staples can find a place for a nursing mother to pump at a small cost. The store is huge. I've worked at a number of retail establishments, and most of them were of a size that it should not be problematic or overly expensive to make the appropriate accommodations. However, two of the establishments were more akin to the Starbucks situation - they were small shops in a strip mall with almost no space other than the selling floor. I'm not sure what the proper answer is in those cases, but Staples? Boofuckinghoo.
Well this should make him MORE on board then as breastfeeding imparts immunity to children and can reduce the need for trips to the doctor.
I wonder if businesses could go in on a partnership with say another business in the strip mall. Perhaps kinkos two doors down has a open stock room that they could offer to the Starbucks employee? I think there could be a lot of solutions but I do recognize that it could be hard for some places.
The Staples guy is making this sound like it would be this big dramatic thing. It is not required there be a actual state of the art lacation room. Just private that isn't a bathroom. He is just trying to be add fuel to the fire.
The law doesn't state that it has to be set up so it's out of earshot, though. Having pumped in a lot of conference center bathrooms, I absolutely know it sucks, but from the standpoint of the law, it would be legal.
You'd think that a place that SELLS WALLS wouldn't care about setting up one lousy extra room. In NYS cubical walls are ok so long as they are 7 feet high.
Is this dude Engish? Who says "chamber" anymore?
You said it best!
obviously, having access to a luxury lactation chamber would make me want to have a baby and breastfeed. because the ~1hour/day spent in there would more than make up for the difficulties associated with pregnancy and parenting. what an azzhat.
i am in a cubicle and i go into an empty office no problem. the guys in my office are so uncomfortable that they are giving me my own office so that "your, ya know, personal issue isn't an issue anymore". i think i may tape a sign up calling it a lactation chamber though- it makes me laugh.
I don't know if that would work, but it's certainly an idea worth exploring.
What annoys me about Mr. Staples is that there are legitimate concerns with complying with the law, but his complaints wind up looking petty rather than addressing the meat of the issue. I'd rather talk about how to address the real problems that non-big box stores will face than the mountain Mr. Staples is creating out of a molehill.
I work in a company with 7, yes 7, employees. When I asked my boss about where I could pump, he didn't miss a beat and offered an office with no windows - the only office in here aside from his own. It's got an outlet and a desk. And a door that locks.
I still contend we would not be having any of these conversations if men were the ones who birthed and fed babies. It makes me irate.