On Consumerism: My employer provided child care

Joshua Bessex/The Associated Press
In 1971, Gerry and Lilo Leeds founded a trade newspaper called Electronic Buyers’ News and operated it from their house. The middle-aged couple did quite well with their little business.

Fifteen years later, I joined their empire. Yes, it had become an empire. About a dozen publications. At its peak, about 1,800 employees. At its Manhasset, New York headquarters, the company rented several floors of a colossal office building less than five miles from the Leeds home.

By then the founders were elderly.

I met Gerry my first week on the job, in the summer of 1986. We were both washing our hands. Without introductions, the white-haired stranger asked if I was new there; I said yes. He asked what I thought of the company; I guardedly said it seemed all right, so far.

A colleague later asked, “Do you know who you were talking to?”

“No idea,” I said. “Just some guy in the men’s room.”

“That was Gerry Leeds.”

I gasped. (During my four years there, that was the only time I met him.)

During my first year at the company – then called CMP Publications – the founders began addressing child-care needs.

Then and now, many folks felt uncomfortable working far away from their little ones. Then and now, few could afford full-time baby-sitters.

Mr. and Mrs. Leeds realized they sometimes lost talented employees who, after giving birth, felt there was no choice but to stay home with their babies and toddlers. Also, tending to a child kept many talented people from applying for work in the first place.

So the Leeds tackled the problem. Their solution was elegantly simple: Provide child-care services on site.

Think about it. Parents could work there while knowing their little ones were in the same building. During the day they could visit.

By having the company run the child care, the total cost of it was far, far lower than if all the concerned households had each paid for their own child care.

The program kicked into being in about 1987. Renting additional space in the building was the easy part. Running the gauntlet of governmental permits was the time-consuming part.

The test project was a little girl whose mother, Debbie R., was an art director. Debbie eventually did a redesign on the publication I worked for. While her daughter was elsewhere in the building.

During the day, and especially at lunch, Debbie could go visit her daughter, who for a time was the sole child in the facility. Occasionally the little girl would toddle around our editorial offices with her mom.

Without that child-care service, Debbie might have become another stay-at-home mom.

The program expanded, and many more children were added to it.

The child-care program never pretended to be a preschool. It was simply a large room where credentialed adults baby-sat the young children of the workers.

Granted, this solution is tailored to large businesses, with large workforces. But it illustrates that when people are willing, they can find solutions.

Mr. & Mrs. Leeds retired in 1988 or 1989 and turned the business over to two of their sons. In 1999 the family sold the company – for about $920 million.

Not bad for a company that started as a home-based business.

As usually happens, the buyers chose to run things differently.

Among the changes wrought by the new owners: goodbye, child care.

When a business is beholden to shareholders, profits matter much more than operating as humanely as possible.

But when the company’s founders oversaw day-to-day operations, child care was deemed a need that had to be addressed.

I wish more companies would act that way.

Child-care needs are still with us today. Perhaps the Leeds’ solution can spur others into action.

What Gerry and Lilo Leeds did is not the full answer to our nation’s child-care woes. But it ought to become a piece of the solution.

Arthur Vidro is one of the Eagle Times’ recurring financial columnists. His “EQMM Goes to College” appeared in the May/June 2021 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.