A group of 181 CEOs have issued a statement proclaiming the need to help deal with income inequality and working conditions. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with New York Times reporter David Gelles.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

The nation’s most powerful business executives have issued what amounts to a new mission statement. It moves away from the view that shareholder profits trump all other goals. The new statement out today and signed by executives on the Business Roundtable asserts the following. Quote, “Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity.” Back in 1997, the Business Roundtable said the main objective of a business enterprise was to generate economic returns for its owners. Reporter David Gelles is following this story for The New York Times. He’s with us now.

Hey, David.

DAVID GELLES: Hi.

KELLY: What prompted this statement? Why now?

GELLES: For years now, business has been getting more and more wrapped up in some of the social and political debates roiling this country. And at a moment when Senator Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are really pointing fingers at business, CEOs finally realized they needed to try to recast the public’s perception of what it is business is here for.

KELLY: Practically, does this change anything? What does this mission statement actually do?

GELLES: What they’re trying to do is not so much say – every one of these companies is going to adopt a certain policy. Instead, what they’re trying to do is redefine how the public thinks of what businesses are here for. For the longest time, there’s been this notion that the primary role of business is to increase shareholder value. Finally, businesses are getting around to saying, maybe that’s not all we’re supposed to be doing. Maybe we do need to be taking care of our workers. Maybe we do need to be taking care of the environment. Maybe we do need to be taking our suppliers and treating them fairly. Now, again, these are lofty sentiments. But we have yet to see is exactly how the Business Roundtable proposes all these companies go about doing that.

KELLY: Right. I can imagine some people listening might listen to the lofty sentiments and, even if they like them, say, how about some not quite so lofty but more practical sentiments like maybe pushing for a $15-an-hour minimum wage or paid paternal leave or other things that might practically help the lives of employees of these big corporations?

GELLES: I spoke to the CEOs of many of these companies today, and they’ll all be quick to point out, hey. We actually do take pretty good care of our workers. And, hey, we do have lofty and laudable parental and family leave. I think what we’re seeing, though, is a real disconnect between what individual companies do and how the broader business community is perceived by the public because we can see, even if one company has a great leave policy, we’re still at a moment when the divide between rich and poor is widening in this country and at a moment when the environmental problems we’re all facing collectively are getting worse. And so what they’re trying to do and are going to have to figure out is how to translate this sort of collective sentiment of goodwill into real action that everyday Americans sense when they go about their daily lives.

KELLY: Would I be completely cynical to ask if these CEOs might still have their eye on the bottom line in the sense that if they are seen as, quote, “good companies working in the greater public interest” that that might, ultimately, be good for the bottom line?

GELLES: I don’t even think that’s cynical. They would agree with you. They would say that, hey. If we take good care of our employees and we take good care of the environment, ultimately, in the long term, we’re going to have a better and more sustainable business.

KELLY: That’s David Gelles, business reporter for The New York Times. He’s got a column there called Corner Office.

David Gelles, thanks.

GELLES: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF WEI, THE FIELD TAPES AND PORT GEORGE’S “BORDERS”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian about his article in The New York Times advocating for increased paternity leave.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We’ve been talking a lot on this program lately about work and family and choices – how working parents are maneuvering to keep all the moving parts of their lives functioning together. Today we want to talk about another key element – fathers, more specifically, paternity leave. There’s a growing body of research about the benefits of men taking time off after the birth or adoption of a child, and yet the research also says that 76% of American fathers are back to work within a week. My next guest wants to change that.

Alexis Ohanian is the co-founder of Reddit and the venture capital firm Initialized Capital, and he also happens to be married to one of the world’s most high-profile working women out there, tennis champion Serena Williams. The two welcomed a daughter in 2017, but you may remember that Serena experienced life-threatening complications. Ohanian wound up taking 16 weeks of paternity leave to care for them both, and he’s now a vocal advocate of other fathers doing the same. He wrote an article about this published in The New York Times a few days ago.

And Alexis Ohanian is with us now. Thank you so much for talking to us.

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Oh, thank you for having me, Michel.

MARTIN: So you mentioned in your article that Reddit already offered paternity leave, but it wasn’t your idea. And you say you never thought much about it. So why did Reddit offer it? Did you feel it was competitively necessary? Was it good PR? As you point out, it certainly is not the law in the United States.

OHANIAN: Yeah. Well, you know, at the time, when I came back to help lead the Reddit turnaround in 2014, there was literally no HR team. There was no policy. And one of our early hires, a woman Katelin Holloway came in. And she brought with her a sort of big old book of policy guidelines for the company. And when she presented the 16 weeks, I didn’t think much of it other than, OK, that seems reasonable because the war for talent is so great in tech. Benefits like paid leave are one of the big levers that we all, well, basically have to have in order to convince folks to not only join but also retain them in the long term.

MARTIN: And as I mentioned, and as many people remember, Serena Williams suffered serious complications, which I have to say sparked a whole other conversation about the state of maternal health in this country, including a whole – the whole issue of racial disparity.

OHANIAN: Especially among women of color.

MARTIN: Especially among women of color. But – so that’s another issue. But – forgive me, I have to ask. Do you honestly think if she had not been so seriously ill, do you think you would have taken your whole leave?

OHANIAN: Absolutely. And I know that because I had already made the plans. I remember asking Katelin about a month before Olympia was due to put me through the process just like any other employee at the company. And at the time I really just thought, I’m doing this because I know I’m never going to get this time again. And why not?

MARTIN: And you point out that that is unusual. I mean, you say in your piece – and I think the research is very clear – that even when companies offer paid leave, men don’t take advantage of it. They certainly don’t take their full leave. Why is that?

OHANIAN: Well, there is a stigma around it. And for me, I knew I had to do it. Look – leaders have to lead. And as a leader within the organization, I wanted to give cover for everyone – men and women – to take full advantage of the policy because, at the end of the day, I think that that stigma remains until enough of us – and then I do mean in particular like male executives – can lead by example and show that we can take this time, be away from the office, be there for our families and still be just as driven, still be just as motivated and not have it be perceived as a weakness.

And so we’ve had three new parents actually at Initialized – three dads who all were on leave at the same time. And for each of them, they chose to create a different plan for themselves that made sense for their family. So if they wanted to be off for a month and then use the next three months’ worth of leave by just taking off every Thursday, Friday, great. And I think that dynamic really supports the families and lets these employees, when they’re in the office, actually do their best work.

MARTIN: You know, I can see where somebody’s listening to our conversation might be saying, well, I mean, of course you took leave – you’re the boss. I mean, of course you took leave – I mean, Serena Williams, excuse me. But I can also see where it cuts the other way. I can also see where somebody might say, well, I can’t leave, I’m the boss. It’s not just my family depending on me. My employees are depending on me. My shareholders are depending on me. So I guess what I’m asking you is, do you have some advice for fathers to help them make this happen, particularly for people who, as you point out, are afraid they might lose their jobs?

OHANIAN: There are really important protections that are in place. When it comes to taking this kind of leave, We don’t want to see it affect anyone’s job, a man or a woman, right? And so I really believe that this is a cultural shift that is happening. And look. I’ve been a CEO. I run a company to this day. And we work with dozens of some really amazing CEOs within our Initialized portfolio. And I would give all of them and anyone listening the same advice, which is do what you need to do in order to support both your family and your business, your startup, your company because the two are far more intertwined than I think historically we’ve given them credit for. And the reality is doing what’s best for your family and for your sort of personal well-being is oftentimes actually also going to be what’s best for the business.

MARTIN: That’s Alexis Ohanian. He’s the co-founder of Reddit and the venture capital firm Initialized Capital. Mr. Ohanian, thanks so much for talking with us.

OHANIAN: Oh, thank you very much, Michel.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

NPR’s Michel Martin talks about the new partnership between the NFL and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation with professor Chenjerai Kumanyika, political consultant Dru Ealons and NPR hip-hop writer Rodney Carmichael.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now we want to turn to a big announcement this week – the decision by Jay-Z, the rap artist and business executive, to partner with the NFL to advise the league on artists for major events like the Super Bowl. The NFL – the National Football League, for those who just arrived here from another planet – is the country’s most profitable and most-watched pro sports league and has entered into a multi-year partnership with Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation. In addition to helping place artists, the press release said a major component of the partnership will be to “nurture and strengthen community through football and music.” That’s a quote.

The announcement came as the league is starting yet another season, and it came almost three years to the very day that former quarterback Colin Kaepernick started sitting and then taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem before games as a protest against police violence and other issues. That set off a huge controversy that really has not ended. President Trump weighed in and used vulgarities to describe players who supported Kaepernick. The league tried to clamp down on protests, and that caused other athletes even in other leagues to also take a knee.

So, as you might imagine, Jay-Z’s decision to partner with the NFL is also controversial. The Carolina Panthers’ Eric Reid, a longtime friend of Kaepernick’s, has criticized Jay-Z’s engagements with the NFL.

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ERIC REID: Jay-Z claimed to be a supporter of Colin – you know, wore his jersey, told people not to perform at the Super Bowl because of the treatment that the NFL did to Colin. And now he’s going to be a part owner. It’s kind of despicable.

MARTIN: What he’s referring to there is that there are unconfirmed reports that Jay-Z will take an ownership stake in an as-yet unnamed team while Kaepernick has not played in two years. So we thought the Barbershop would be a great place to talk about this because that’s where we invite interesting people to talk about what’s in the news and what’s on their minds. So joining us here in the studio in Washington, D.C., is Dru Ealons, political consultant, CEO of The Ealons Group.

Welcome.

DRU EALONS: Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: Chenjerai Kumanyika is a professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. He’s writing a book about the history of hip-hop and activism.

Professor, welcome to you.

CHENJERAI KUMANYIKA: Hey. Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: Also with us is Rodney Carmichael, who covers hip-hop for NPR.

Rodney, welcome back.

RODNEY CARMICHAEL, BYLINE: Hey. Thanks, Michel.

MARTIN: So, professor, I’m going to start with you because you are a Jay-Z fan, and you have said that you are disappointed in his decisions. Why?

MARTIN: Yes. I mean, I’m a fan of Jay-Z, right? He’s a gifted artist. And, you know, his journey even in terms of financially and all these things is very compelling. But, you know, Jay-Z, when asked about this, one of the things he said was that he hoped that the Inspire Change platform would give people like Kaepernick a place to protest off the field. And when he said that, he aligned himself with a long history of people who have attempted to de-legitimize and shame justified protest by saying, basically, I support your issue but not your methods.

MARTIN: OK. Dru, what do you say about that?

EALONS: I think one of the things that I first of all thought about why have we all jumped on calling this man a sellout, listening to Eric Reid discuss his whole displeasure around, oh, you’re going to partner with them – but he’s playing on the field. Kaepernick is not. He did not say, I will not play unless Kaepernick plays, right?

And so here, you have an opportunity. Jay-Z sees an opportunity. He is not stupid. He understands his value. So he’s going to actually do something and say, OK, listen. If you want me – didn’t he say in a song that I don’t need you, you need me? Well, the NFL said, yes, we do. We need you, and we’re going to pay you to come to us and help us around social justice, etc. I think we are putting a whole lot ahead of things and not even know exactly what’s going to happen.

MARTIN: OK. Well, Rodney, what do you say about that? And musically, I’m particularly interested in how this squares with what Jay-Z is all about. Dru just mentioned one of his lyrics from…

EALONS: I think it’s a lyric.

MARTIN: …A song title that I can’t – it is from a song title I can’t say on the air.

EALONS: Oh.

MARTIN: So it’s – anyway, you know the song.

EALONS: (Laughter).

MARTIN: I can’t say it on the air…

CARMICHAEL: (Laughter).

MARTIN: …Very popular song. So…

CARMICHAEL: Yeah.

MARTIN: Rodney, how does this square with what he’s said?

CARMICHAEL: I mean, for one thing, I think we’ve got to remember that, you know, hip-hop has raised a whole generation of fans on this don’t hate the player, hate the game ethos, right? Like capitalism…

KUMANYIKA: Yes.

CARMICHAEL: And Jay-Z – he’s the crown prince of this, you know? And it doesn’t even begin to account for how much the system itself is really rooted in white supremacy and inequality. So I think you have to start right there.

Now, Jay-Z has a lot of fans because we see him as a guy who has overcome a lot of that inequality, you know, for different reasons. You know, he has a talent that most people don’t have that he’s exploited, you know, to very successful means. But I think that really, a lot of what he’s doing right now, despite a lot of his other efforts outside of music, is really kind of undermining the movement. And it’s kind of surprising, to be honest.

MARTIN: But he’s been criticized for not being – for example, Harry Belafonte, the great actor and activist, has criticized him and his wife Beyonce, saying that they really haven’t used their platform to advance structural issues sufficiently. I mean, it’s true that Beyonce has elevated a lot of these issues through her music…

KUMANYIKA: Right.

MARTIN: And she has funded scholarships. And Jay-Z, for example, has started to support cultural works like the Meek Mill documentary that have explored some of these issues. But his argument is that they aren’t doing enough given how prominent they are. So I guess I’ll ask Dru, you want to weigh in on this?

EALONS: Yeah. I mean, that was, you know, several years ago. And then we also know that Belafonte had walked that back, and because he realized that what he said and how he said it – by lifting up Bruce Springsteen to being something – like, being more black than Jay-Z – so then he had to walk all of that back. And, you know, sometimes, you know, there’s no good deed goes unpunished. And at some point, you don’t know what all they did privately, and you don’t know what all they did publicly. I remember once a long time ago when Oprah Winfrey was getting a whole bunch of flack about opening up schools in Africa – well, what about schools here? You know, can we stop counting people’s money?

MARTIN: Well…

(CROSSTALK)

MARTIN: Professor, you know, that is – so here’s the interesting question, I think. You know, the NFL controls the board, Inspire Change…

KUMANYIKA: Right.

MARTIN: …A social justice…

KUMANYIKA: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Initiative. Sports isn’t really your thing, but social activism is. So the question I think, based on your research, is there any evidence that these kind of corporate-controlled initiatives actually do make a difference?

KUMANYIKA: Well, when you hear Jay-Z talk about actionable steps, what he’s doing is erasing a whole history of social justice activism that’s going on that is not simply like Beyonce on stage with a beret, although that was powerful. But, you know, I’m talking about, like, material action. And there’s also a history of hip-hop activism – people like my friend Jasiri X in 1Hood Media. So the question for Jay-Z is this – when you say you stand for social justice, as he and Roc Nation have said, the question is, when you stand that way, and when you take that stand, and when the struggle needs you to make a sacrifice, do you choose profits?

MARTIN: OK, But I think what what Dru’s asking – I think what her question is is that there’s one thing to make performative gestures. If Jay-Z does, in fact, take an ownership position, wouldn’t he then be in a position to vote on some of these issues?

KUMANYIKA: Well, exactly. And I think the thing is is that if the headlines that come out and say Jay-Z uses his position of power with the NFL to push to get something something doable like that policy removed about protesters – I mean, athletes not being able to express their rights to protest on the field, then we’ve dealt with it – like, that would have been Jay-Z using his power.

MARTIN: Dru’s about to explode here.

EALONS: (Laughter).

MARTIN: But she’s…

EALONS: But I…

MARTIN: Her hands are going. The necks’ going. Go ahead, Dru.

EALONS: I think that was the professor talking. I don’t – I’m not sure.

MARTIN: Yes.

EALONS: But one of the things he said was when he said it’s time to do some activism, move forward to doing something outside, etc., that it undermines years of activism prior to – I don’t think that’s where he was coming from. Even in his statement, people have taken soundbites – because, you know, we’re in a 30-second society. He said, you know, yes. Kneeling is one thing. Kneeling should continue.

However, we are – time to put things into action. And what we don’t know is what we don’t know. We don’t know what else is part of the social action plan. If he has Reform Alliance already dealing with criminal justice, if he’s doing all these other things externally, how is it that we know that there’s not something actionable? I go back to my former statement. He is not stupid.

MARTIN: OK. Let me ask Rodney here – it was reported that a number of artists declined to perform at the Super Bowl last year and the prior year because of Colin Kaepernick still not getting a job or not getting a playing position. Now, you know, his – he hasn’t played for two years. It’s just unclear whether he is still in a position to play. But I wonder whether this – you know, Jay-Z has a lot of clout in the industry. Do you think that that would be enough to persuade artists to change their minds about this?

CARMICHAEL: Well, I mean, he has more than clout and influence. I mean, he has a major company – you know, Roc Nation, which parent company, Live Nation – they manage a lot of artists and control, you know, the paths of their careers. So I think the – what you see is him leveraging a lot of that power that he actually has in the industry. And I think, going back to, you know, when Belafonte criticized Beyonce a few years ago, I think another thing to remember, another comment that was eventually walked back by Jay-Z – his initial response to that was my presence is charity.

KUMANYIKA: Oh, yeah. I remember…

EALONS: Yeah.

CARMICHAEL: And if you look at – he ended up walking that back and saying he wished he hadn’t responded in that manner.

MARTIN: OK. OK.

CARMICHAEL: But I think when you look at what he’s doing now, it kind of holds true that he really does seem to believe it.

MARTIN: OK. Well, a lot of walking back going on. It’s interesting to see what happens going forward. And also, it’ll be interesting to see what the metric will be of – decision about whether this initiative is successful or not.

Unfortunately, we have to leave it there for now. But I guess – I bet we’re going to be talking about this again. Joining us here was political consultant Dru Ealons. She’s actually a former Obama administration appointee. Professor Chenjerai Kumanyika was with us, and NPR’s Rodney Carmichael.

Thank you, everybody.

EALONS: Thank you.

CARMICHAEL: Thanks a lot, Michel.

KUMANYIKA: Thank you.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

As the trade war drags on, companies are beginning to make long-term adjustments. For some, that means hiring workers to redesign or reclassify products or seek new suppliers to sidestep import taxes.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

With no end in sight for the president’s trade war, companies are beginning to make lasting changes. Some are turning to tariff engineering. This involves looking for ways to redesign their products or restructure their supply chains in an effort to reduce import taxes. The process is complicated, but it’s creating a whole new category of jobs, as NPR’s Scott Horsley reports.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Nearly $60 billion worth of cargo passes through the Port of Baltimore each year. Twenty-foot shipping containers are stacked high at the port terminal. The road vibrates under a line of trucks waiting to haul the containers away. For more than a century, Margie Shapiro and her family have worked as customs brokers at the port. Her grandfather started the business, shipping wheat to a hungry Europe in the midst of World War I.

MARGIE SHAPIRO: It’s such a messy business that there are always problems. So to have experts on board to manage them is essential.

HORSLEY: Shapiro helps clients with the sometimes complicated business of shipping, tracking and warehousing cargo as it moves across the ocean to a customer. Ever since President Trump launched his trade war, she’s been equally busy navigating the rough seas of tariff regulation.

SHAPIRO: Our job really has been education and navigation, recognizing the opportunities that are available and the strategies that are available to try to address unexpected surprises.

HORSLEY: Importers can sometimes avoid a tariff by making small changes to a product – something as simple, perhaps, as removing a lightbulb from a lamp, then putting it back once the product’s here in the U.S. They can also try to time shipments to beat a tariff deadline, but that only makes sense if the tariff savings outweigh the express shipping charges and the extra cost of warehousing a product in this country until it’s needed.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening tariffs on virtually everything the U.S. buys from China, some companies are looking to shift production to other countries, such as Vietnam. Shapiro says rebuilding a supply chain like that is a major undertaking and not something you can do overnight.

SHAPIRO: There’s a lot of relationships that need to be established, and every port is not as developed as China is. So even getting cargo out of India or Vietnam, the lead time is different, so there’s a lot of homework to be done.

HORSLEY: To help with that work, Shapiro is hiring. She’s advertising for an import regulatory specialist, and she’s not alone. Research director Martha Gimbel of the Indeed Hiring Lab has seen a noticeable spike in help-wanted ads for both tariff and supply chain experts since the beginning of the year.

MARTHA GIMBEL: On a net basis, the trade war has absolutely not been good for the job market, but it is great for trade lawyers.

HORSLEY: Some of the job listings specify tariff compliance. Gimbel says that’s not necessarily where companies would like to put their resources, but they’re growing resigned to the idea that the trade war is not going away.

GIMBEL: Any time that the economic situation is becoming more complicated or more volatile, companies who figure out how to take advantage of that are going to move ahead.

HORSLEY: AA Metals in Orlando is advertising for a trade compliance coordinator to help the company shop for imported aluminum. Chief Operating Officer Don Lawson says what used to be a simple supply chain has been scrambled by the president’s terrorists, and that shows no sign of settling down.

DON LAWSON: The growing joke in our industry is, we’re just waiting on the next tweet.

HORSLEY: That’s a challenge even for shipping veterans. At Shapiro’s office in Baltimore, a vice president describes the atmosphere as organized chaos. Margie Shapiro interrupts to say, yeah, but we thrive on that.

Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Texas is holding a sales tax holiday this weekend to help draw shoppers. But will they come out in El Paso, the scene of last week’s mass shooting?

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

It’s a big back-to-school shopping week, and Texas stores are having their annual tax-free weekend. And usually, retailers in El Paso get a lot of business from people just over the border in Mexico. But after the recent mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart, fewer shoppers want to make the trip. From El Paso, Houston Public Media’s Andrew Schneider reports.

ANDREW SCHNEIDER, BYLINE: El Paso is uniquely situated. From the main highway, you can see straight into Mexico. The economies of El Paso and its sister Ciudad Juarez are intertwined, meaning that local retailers in El Paso depend heavily on cross-border shopping. University of Texas at El Paso economist Tom Fullerton studies the region known locally as the borderplex.

TOM FULLERTON: In any given year, anywhere between 8% and 14% of total retail sales go to residents from northern Mexico.

SCHNEIDER: This mall, called The Fountains at Farah, is not far from the Walmart where the shooting took place. Lisa Vasquez out school shopping with her son is thinking about that but isn’t overly concerned.

LISA VASQUEZ: I don’t think that would happen, like, again. I don’t think that would happen with people from here from El Paso. So I’m not worried about that.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SCHNEIDER: On the west side of the city, outlet shops are doing brisk business, too. Bridget Sheets is here shopping with her children.

BRIDGET SHEETS: I think law enforcement does a really good job. El Paso’s always been a safe place. Things happen, and it just so happened that that circumstance happened here in El Paso.

SCHNEIDER: It appears many residents on this side of the border are going on with their back-to-school shopping as normal. But Tom Fullerton says for shoppers from across the border, it’s a different challenge.

FULLERTON: The traffic that would normally materialize from Ciudad Juarez and is probably going to be reduced is going to remain at home and purchase the items they would purchase here in El Paso from shopping centers in Ciudad Juarez.

SCHNEIDER: Even at this early date, Fullerton estimates that the shooting could cost retailers in El Paso more than $10 million because of those reluctant to cross the bridge. He arrives at that number by citing previous security concerns.

FULLERTON: Several years back, unfortunately, Ciudad Juarez was going through a period of heightened narcotics-related violence and narcotics-related homicides. And back in those days, for every additional two homicides, there was a loss of about $1 million in retail activity.

SCHNEIDER: Twenty-two homicides equals $11 million. At the height of Juarez’s narco violence, many Mexican shoppers flocked to the safety of El Paso. Now, it’s El Paso that looks more dangerous.

FULLERTON: This is likely to be a temporary change in customer visitation patterns from northern Mexico and El Paso.

SCHNEIDER: Fullerton says El Paso’s economy as a whole should be able to absorb the hit, but it will be a hard blow for individual retailers who depend heavily on back-to-school sales. Add to that recurring long lines at the border crossing and the weakness of the peso, and that may further discourage Mexican shoppers in the coming months. For NPR News, I’m Andrew Schneider in El Paso.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Cristina Tcheyan about her decision to leave her job at Google to raise her children — and how companies can be more supportive of working parents.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It’s an election year, as you know, and the big issues – health care, the climate, immigration, gun safety – are finding their way into the national conversation. But when it comes to one big issue, parental leave or family leave, companies are still the ones really making policy in how much leave, latitude and support they offer. And many caregivers, even ones with good jobs and benefits, are finding it’s still hard to make it all work.

That’s Cristina Tcheyan’s story. She decided to leave her job at Google to stay home with her youngest, but she didn’t go quietly. In true tech fashion, she did the research and sent it all to the company’s CEO and head of HR when she resigned in March, outlining ways she thinks the company can do more to support working parents. She posted her findings on Medium. And when we caught up with her, she told us, when it comes to policies that help working parents, child care at work is a good start.

CRISTINA TCHEYAN: I came to think of onsite child care as one of the really more important ones, but it has to be in kind of in combination with paid family leave and then also kind of a conversation around flexibility at work. But basically, I found that certainly smaller companies were having really good success with it. And on their books, it was totally paying for itself. And then you would see in their leadership and their senior manager levels where, you know, many companies see a drop-off in the number of women, and more diversity kind of falls off there. Those companies were maintaining at least a gender diversity ratio of more like 50/50.

Again, at a small company, it didn’t cost a lot. And then I kind of looked at my company that is incredibly profitable and makes many billions of dollars in profit a quarter. And that might be quite possible at a company like mine. And then I found, you know, a case study about another very large company with more employees than Google that had done or had tried it.

MARTIN: So there are a couple other things that were interesting. I mean, the piece is very interesting. But you said pay for interviewees’ child care so that they can attend onsite interviews. And you said that, particularly with underrepresented groups, lack of access to child care may even keep them from interviewing from even interviewing. That’s an interesting idea.

TCHEYAN: Yeah. This is a very active conversation. Certainly in tech, where, you know, where I work, where it’s very underrepresented in all kinds of categories, but there’s an active conversation, and there’s a lot of intention around having a more diverse team. That’s good for us. That’s good for our users. And it struck me in looking at all of this stuff. And then it’s really relatable when you think about it. But sometimes you’re in a position where you don’t – you can’t really arrange the child care until you have the. Job it’s a little bit of this chicken and egg. And so, you know, the interview is really – it’s untenable in a way.

But then you just miss out on all – on plenty of people who are – maybe haven’t taken care of children or, for them, up until this point, the equation worked out such that it was more-cost effective for them to stay home with their children than to have the job. And so, yeah, it just seems like you’re leaving people on the sidelines, and that’s certainly an expensive one relatively.

MARTIN: But I guess the $64,000 question is – you sent this very sort of comprehensive kind of idea here, you sent it to HR, you sent it to the CEO – did you get a response?

TCHEYAN: I did. I heard back from the head of YouTube HR who clearly read it and was really thoughtful in their response and said that, you know, this – supporting YouTube’s parents – because that was my subject line – is a priority, it’s a total priority and that, you know, there are some really good ideas in there, and I’d like to talk further. So that was the response that I got.

MARTIN: OK. It sounds like yay. I mean, that was – what is that? I don’t even know what to say to that. What does that even mean?

TCHEYAN: I think I had an assumption that really large companies like mine would have the easiest time implementing these things because they had the resources, and they had these huge piles of money to throw at this stuff. But what I’ve heard really is much smaller companies are more nimble and can more quickly make policy change.

And so I’ve heard from startup founders who have reached out who want to have, you know, a diverse team from the start, a company culture that supports everyone from the get-go as they grow. And they’ve made changes readily like adding reimbursement for interviewees’ child care. So I think maybe – I don’t know if I underestimated how hard it would be to institutionalize something like this at a big global company, but yeah, it would have been great to hear – and tomorrow, onsite child care for everyone, you know (laughter).

MARTIN: Well, what do you think? Now that you’ve put it out there, what do you think? Do you feel hopeful? Do you feel pessimistic?

TCHEYAN: No. I think – I do feel quite hopeful. I heard back directly from companies that decided to make policy changes as a result of the research. So my sort of experiment there, you know, if you have the information then you might do something with it, so far, is proving positive.

MARTIN: That’s Cristina Tcheyan. She’s a former employee at Google. We’re talking about her piece in Working Mother magazine describing a letter of advice she wrote to her former employers about why they should institute better and more supportive family policies. Cristina Tcheyan, thanks so much for talking to us.

TCHEYAN: Thank you, Michel.

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