A group of mothers at Amazon, who’ve called themselves the Momazonians, are pressuring the company to offer backup daycare as a part of their employee packages, according to Bloomberg. The group is comprised of 1,800 women working at different levels across the company.
Amazon has not yet built out a backup daycare benefit for the working mothers, but women within the company have elevated the issue. Amazon’s argument is that it already offers a robust benefits package for its employees.
“When creating benefits, we focus on efforts that can scale to help the largest number of individuals, and work in partnership with our employees to ensure that what we build provides meaningful support,” the company said an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
Amazon has a list of policies and benefits aimed at helping parents within the company, backup daycare just isn’t among them. Employee benefits do include shared paid parental leave with a spouse, the option of spreading out the timing of the leave according to their needs, and also working part-time after childbirth.
The Momazonians believe adding backup daycare benefits will help foster an inclusive environment within the company. It doesn’t make it any better that other tech companies like Apple, already offer the perk to working mothers.
“The childcare topic was quickly identified as one of our biggest priorities,” states an email that circulated recently among the Momazonians. “We assert that a key to increasing diversity of women is to prioritize parent-friendly benefits and policies.”
-Bloomberg
The group is scheduled to meet with Amazon senior leadership in the coming weeks. In addition to backup daycare, the group wants Amazon Human Resources to look into other challenges around childcare that employees are facing.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, paid parental leave is only available to 17 percent of working Americans.
