daycare at the plants?

[inyourface]

I am the mother of an eleven month old and find it very difficult to work these outage hours and spend time with my son.  Me and a friend who also has a young child were talking one day about how awesome it would be if plants would offer child care at the plant.  Parents could spend their break times with their kids and we thought it would be cool.  So I was just wondering what everyone else thought about the idea?

[HAIRDUDE]

Great idea in theory, but the logistics and potential for litigation stemming from having minor children on site at a nuclear plant are a nightmare. Not to mention the ramifications for E-Plan.

[RDTroja]

As nice as the idea sounds for parents, Hairdude is right about the legal aspects and the absoulte disaster that would ensue if there were ever a problem in the plant. For just one small example, if you were a technician and there was a plant evacuation, could you continue to perform your emergency duties if your toddler was one of the people being evacuated?

On top of that, do you think it would be good for mommy (or daddy) to appear and disappear throughout the day while the daycare provider is trying to keep a group of small children under control? Given that breaks are often scattered about, there would almost always be a parent or two or twelve disturbing the 'routine' (if there even is such a thing) in the daycare. And how about those who have no set break time, such as the BOP techs? I personally would not like to be partnered with someone (male or female) that I can't count on to be around to help because they are visiting their child.

Please don't get me wrong about that... I think that it is absoultely vital that parents spend as much time as possible with their kids, and I could not blame someone for wanting to spend time with theirs. But (there is that word again) not while they are at work and not at the expense of someone else who would (not always but often enough) have to cover for an absent parent. I have a great deal of sympathy for parents that have to work instead of staying home to raise the kids. Sometimes it is a choice and sometimes a necessity that both parents (or a single parent) have to leave their children in the care of others to go earn the daily bread. Either way I am sure it is a tough thing to do. But a nuclear plant is no place for children (insert your own joke here) for a vast array of reasons.

[Already Gone]

All valid points, Roger.  But, many places of employment manage to provide child-care services without diminishing the quality or productivity of their business.  A little discipline in the workplace cures all the ills you mentioned.  There could be designated times and places for parental visits during the workday.  There could be lots of things to make it work.
I would have absolutely NO fear for my children's safety at a nuclear plant.  Naturally, I wouldn't locate their nap time inside the power block.  But there are gyms at power plants, restaurants, safety shoe stores, training centers, visitors' centers (before 9-11 expanded the security boundaries) why not a day care center.

I think it is about time we moved either one way or another on nuclear safety.  It is either safe to have children in a school just down the road from a nuke plant or it is unsafe to have them in a daycare center right inside the fence.  We can't have it both ways.  If we really believe that this is a safe form of energy, we need to let our actions agree with our words.  Any nuke plant which isn't safe enough for my kids for the workday isn't safe for the kids who live inside the EPZ around the clock.

Site evacuation is a panacea anyway.  EPZ evacuation is even more ridiculous.  Put those kids right in the same building as the guardhouse with the correct ventillation equipment.  They'll be plenty safe.

As for the joke part, insert any of the following phrases after the word "children";
without NRC licenses,
who can't pass the NEU Exam,
unless their site-coordinator can keep them in line.....

[SloGlo]

Ihow awesome it would be if plants would offer child care at the plant.  Parents could spend their break times with their kids and we thought it would be cool.  So I was just wondering what everyone else thought about the idea?

it sounds like a good idea, but da afourmentioned liabilities are ona front burner.  the entrepreneur in me says that as one who is intimately connected to the situation, it could be very beneficial to you to explore the idea as a business for yourself. once you get the meetings with the lawyers out of the way, you could get into franchise agreements with the plants, not only for the outage times but also for the operational year.  hafta start off small, probably only $50k for a franchise for an individual plant, operators of plant fleets could get a discount, but pretty soon you could have some serious cash flow going.  say
$100/40 hr work week and pro rated for additional/less scheduled time.  so a care center with 50 kids would gross $5k/wk, quarter mill per year.  not to mention that $50k franchise fee in da bank.  eye'll let yinz do the math for a fleet operator with 5 plants.  within 5 years ya should be able to cover alla da plants in dis country 'n be ready to move into international operations.  yinz'd be able to watch yer kids at play ona plasma monitor while sitting at yer desk in da corner office yakking ona phone about how stressful executive work is and how ya miss da daze of running around da country, jumping in and out of smelly p.c., enjoying da playful give and take of da craft werkers, n@.

[RDTroja]

...There could be designated times and places for parental visits during the workday.

In order to work with the variety of HP coverage schedules the visiting hours would just about have to be 'all the time' to make it fair for all, or break out the earplugs to stifle the whining.

I would have absolutely NO fear for my children's safety at a nuclear plant.

Neither would I except for the evacuation part. If a site evacuation occurs (granted, they are rare, but they happen) it would be a situation I would not want to put my (or anyone else's) children in... or the daycare providers.

I think it is about time we moved either one way or another on nuclear safety.  It is either safe to have children in a school just down the road from a nuke plant or it is unsafe to have them in a daycare center right inside the fence.  We can't have it both ways.

I am not asking to have it both ways. Inside the fence and outside the fence are two dramatically different things. This is not a matter of radiological safety (at least not to me) but of physical safety. I am concerned about the actual evacuation, not the cause of the evacuation. If daycare was outside the fence and would not have to leave if there was a Site Emergency, no problem... but then visits would be problematic.

Site evacuation is a panacea anyway.  EPZ evacuation is even more ridiculous.  Put those kids right in the same building as the guardhouse with the correct ventillation equipment.  They'll be plenty safe.

I agree whole heartedly. Now just get the NRC and the public to agree -- not to mention National Nuclear Insurers. Evacuation is not an option based on 'they'll be plenty safe.' Please don't let reality interfere with the regulations. 

I think the answer may be daycare outside the fence... no visitation during working hours. If that sounds harsh, you could say visitation during certain hours and only when you are on break... and good luck policing that. And better luck when you are looking for the stray parent who happens to be your work partner and you have more work than you can cover by yourself. Discipline is fine but experience shows that there are always those that blow it for the people who can discipline themselves, and when that happens the offender is rarely the only one losing privileges. Call me a pessimist, but I prefer realist.

[grantime]

Another thing to consider.  At least here techs out of ctmt are still availble to do short duration jobs.  They aren't the first to get picked but sometimes it happens.  If Dad or Mom is over playing with kiddies then they aren't available for work. That means that someone else gets to pick up their slack.  Not being heartless but we are getting paid for the hours we are on site. 

There should be some way to find a compromise to help with daycare.  Not sure what it would be.  Hard to find daycare folks willing to work all shifts 7 days a week. That is what you would really need to make it work

[Fermi2]

Your employer is not your mother. Get a babysitter.

Mike

[Already Gone]

There are still a few plants that exchange cotton scrubs if you contaminate them.  There are a few people I have known who went into decon every day to swap their scrubs for clean ones when they never alarmed a monitor.  Otherwise, doing your laundry isn't uncommon.  Turkey point launders all those gray coveralls that their maintenance workers wear, and a lot of plants launder the polo shirt/khaki pants uniform that their operators wear.
Nobody has suggested at any point that any of this stuff should be offered for free.  Considering that a lot of sites actually rent out their cafeteria facilities or otherwise make a big profit from food service operations, I see no reason why they shouldn't expand their range of services.  If a plant can make money from selling you sandwiches or gym memberships, why not from laundry or daycare.  One plant near me has owned all the houses within a half-mile radius of the site for years.  They rent those houses out to tenants.  They lease out the rest of their land to farmers.  What is so far-fetched about selling some services to employees?  Do you think that the shoemobile comes to a site two or three times an outage without paying a cut to the utility?  Some plants actually lease their simulators to other companies (including some foreign ones) who have similar control rooms but no simulators of their own.
Employees are not always paid for all the time they are on site.  That unpaid half-hour lunch break entitles the employees to do whatever they want (within the bounds of the law), wherever they want to do it, for 30 minutes a day.
The original poster suggested that visits be allowed during breaks.  She never said that "breaks" included all the time she was out of containment.  She never suggested that breaks for parents be any different from the breaks for anyone else.  If your techs are abusing breaks, or playing hide-n-seek, they're already doing it.  There is no reason to assume that a mommy who wants to see her child for a few minutes a day is going to be more likely to pull this crap than the other 45 slugs you have on the job.  In fact, she would be the easiest to track down in a hurry because she's the only one whose whereabouts are going to be known.

If your employer is not your mother, why do they tell you (especially operators) how to dress?  Why do they wash your uniforms and feed you free lunches all the time?  Because it is a good business decision to do these things, that's why.  Plenty of other businesses provide on-site daycare for the same reason.

The only reason I can see why it is unfeasible to do this at nuke plants is simply that there wouldn't be a great enough demand.  Considering that the client list would be strictly limited to site employees, it is unlikely that such an enterprise could be profitable.

[Fermi2]

I have twp beautiful children both who have been the children of a nuke since they were born thank you.  I spent holidays away from them and when I was in the Navy I'd spend months away from them so kindly don't whine to me, You chose to be a roadie now deal with it. I'm certain others would take your place.

George I want my utility to wash my car and send my family nice hot meals.

Mike

[SloGlo]

I have twp beautiful children both who have been the children of a nuke since they were born thank you.  I spent holidays away from them....

me two, but i gawz for kids.  wuz onna rode four mosta da development period.  sigh...   ....  but, iffen da nuke industree mirrored da rest of da industry of des united states, then perhaps on site child care wood knot be considered an out of bounds issue.  be that as it may, it seems to me that having an entreprenuer start up this biz wood be a gold mine, for that individual and for the biz, 'n i don't see da dawnside.  pleez illuminate me, 'k?

[Fermi2]

Yeah but it's not up to the Utilities. In todays deregulated environment WHY add any extra cost?

Mike

[peteshonkwiler]

I don't see the problem of having an outside vendor offer a service to the workers of a nuclear faciliity.  In light of my recent posting  of a grandson, perhaps I am missing a cog on this machine.  Would there be a viable, i.e. profitable, reason to have a near or on site child care facility to a nuclear facility?   I would put my X in the yes column, if there were one.

[flamatrix99]

We have daycare at Turkey Point but I do not think it is for the contractors also.

[Roll Tide]

In todays deregulated environment WHY add any extra cost?

Many Fortune 500 companies offer additional services to their employees. The difference is, they provide these services at HQ, not at the factories. For example, if there is a cafeteria, there is no additional cost to the company to offer take home family meals (think a pan of lasagna pre-cooked). The company doesn't have to subsidize many of these things, but only make them available.

Turkey Point was mentioned by a current employee; they DID have an elementary school on site, but now only have the child care. Yet the child care was not designed for rotating shiftworkers; when attempts were made to make it available during the outages (a co-worker was a single parent), the corporate response was that it was primarily designed for the office staff. Anyone else benefitting from the service was getting an unanticipated benefit.

As staffing gets tighter, perhaps some plants will look at these options.

[RDTroja]

I'm not trying to be rude or anything but did somebody pee in your cheerios this morning?

Don't take it personally, somebody pees in Mike's cheerios every morning. Or, maybe he is just trying to steal Beer Court's title of Curmudgeon.

[Fermi2]

I'm not trying to be rude or anything but did somebody pee in your cheerios this morning?  You make it sound like it would be such an inconvenience for such a thing to take place.  And NEWS FLASH, maybe working in this business is a choice you get to make, but for some of us it's not a choice any more.  So maybe next time you might think before you run your mouth about something you obviously know nothing about.

Nope that's me on a happy and cheerfull day. You always have a choice, you can get out of the industry, or get an education and do something else. Who exactly put you in slavery?

Mike

[Fermi2]

Don't take it personally, somebody pees in Mike's cheerios every morning. Or, maybe he is just trying to steal Beer Court's title of Curmudgeon.

LMAO No Beer Court beats me in the Curmudgeonly contest. BARELY!

Mike

[retired nuke]

Daycare at work would be wonderful. I was lucky and found daycare ~ 1mile from the plant, that could support my hours, even during 2 outages. But this was offsite - nothing to do with the company.
When you factor in that most plants only do 1 outage every 18 mos - 2 yrs, for about 3 wks, the cost and liability of setting up daycare to support the few workers that would use it just doesn't make it feasable. Licensing and inspection from state agencies takes weeks to complete. Most house folks already have things setup, since they live in the surrounding 20 towns, and bringing the kids to work isn't usually the best thing for us.
As you mentioned, it was you and another person that were discussing this - in order to make daycare pay for itself, it would take ~ 10 kids, at a rate to pay for the time to get licensed, and do the background checks on the daycare workers. That would not be cheap.....
Mike is probably right - you may want to rethink your priorities regarding work. If you add up your expenses, and the turmoil being on the road can do to a little ones routine, you may be better off changing careers, or at least going long term DOE for a while.
I am not saying this as someone that has no kids - I have 2, pre-school and kindergarten. I understand the stress of having to work outage hours, and not see my babies. And as a house mouse, I don't have the layoff periods to catch up.
Good luck with this issue, but don't expect much - you are a very small minority, and the power plants really are not in the business of accomodating the supplemental workforce - they will just find someone that can deal with the outage next time.

[illegalsmile]

it would be nice (I have no stake in this....my 'baby' is 32 y/o)....but there are a lot of things that would be nice......real medical coverage, paid vacations, EAPs.....all those things people in 'real' jobs get, things that show they are valued as more than a disposable commodity.
most of Europe and many American companies provide things like on-site day care, 'health centers', etc. but that's not the world we live in.
from a management perspective, I wouldn't want to get involved with the problems that would go w/ having on site day care for short term employees, employees who aren't likely to care too much about the profitability of my plant....maybe for the perms, but not for 'road trash.'
as 'road trash,' yeah, I can see a lot of techs being 'awol' because the 'had to' go deal with some kiddie issue, and a lot who would use that as an excuse.
Bottom line, I don't think it is feasible.

[RADBASTARD]

I think it's a great idea.We should try to make the work place better for parents and it would give road techs with kids alot better life on the road.

[Fermi2]

I think it's a great idea.We should try to make the work place better for parents and it would give road techs with kids alot better life on the road.

Why? People without kids wouldn't have the same benefit and if they can't get people with kids to support an outage there are PLNTY without them.

It's not the utilities job to rear someones brats so they can work.

Mike

[SloGlo]

da bottom line (of da line of bottoms) is dat this will not come about unless you do it.  it would be nice fer a utility to supply a real break area for trades, crafts, 'n engineering types that come onsite fer an outage, but it is rare to get more than a trailer.  lotsa times your time spent ina break area is counted towards yer layoff time anyway.  so's iffen yer out at kiddie kare, ya seriously think yer gonna last longer than 1st layoff?  especially iffen it's outside da protected area?  puhleez.  but i go back to my phurst post on dis thread, start it yerself 'n make da cash.  you go 24/7 fer an outage i bet ya make more money than ya are now.  but getting a utility to put it in place for you.... ain't gonna happen.

[Roll Tide]

OK,
Here is a friendly reminder for everyone to place nice together. Attack issues, not each other.



We currently have threads showing lodging at each location. IF someone posted a child care link at each site, it would justify the effort for a moderator to dedicate a separate thread for each. For a starting point, just post the information on that site's lodging thread. Include whether they accomodate contractors (how many weeks minimum).

[Fermi2]

Oh I've succeed plenty in this industry and anyone who has worked with me knows I'm probably one of the best people in it. I know this for a fact.

I'm not trying to be mean but child care is your responsibility, no one elses,

Mike