One of Nike's "most valuable perks is the Nike Child Development Program, the subsidized, on-site daycare center available to working parents" at its HQ in Oregon, but the company is "planning to close the NCDP and replace it with an off-campus facility run by a partner, Endeavor Schools," according to Greenfield & Novy-Williams of BLOOMBERG NEWS. Started in '90, the program now "accommodates over 500 families, with more than 500 on the waiting list." Prices at the new facility will "remain competitive" and Nike will "retain oversight." But the move, "aimed at making more Nike families happy, may have achieved the opposite." Several Nike Employees said that a petition to "keep the program Nike-run and on-campus had more than 1,300 signatures, including about 130 from parents currently on the waitlist or who had tried to get a spot but never got in." Employees "don't want the center to move off-campus" and they are "skeptical about Endeavor, a for-profit national network of daycares and schools" owned by N.Y.-based private equity firm Leeds Equity Partners. They are also "upset by the decision to effectively lay off more than 100 Nike teachers and caregivers who run the program now." Some employees said that the change is "emblematic of Nike's failure to adjust to a corporate culture that at best ignores the professional stress faced by women in particular" (BLOOMBERG NEWS, 6/7).
