Day Care Workers Flex Their Muscle

When her infant daughter's chronic ear infections made her miss too many days at work, Angenita Tanner of Chicago decided in 1996 to quit her job and work from home as a full-time babysitter.

Experienced in the field and equipped with an associate degree in early childhood education, she launched Grandma's House Child Care. Her first clients were low-income working mothers whose daycare expenses were paid by the state. Six months after Tanner's career change, she found herself on the brink of financial ruin. She had received no payment from the state for the eight children in her daily care.

"I was in business six months and not getting a paycheck. I was at the kitchen table with my assistant, a retired nurse, going over the bills. I'm feeding the kids, trying to pay my mortgage, trying to provide materials like books and toys, plus I haven't paid my assistant," she remembers. "Being in business for yourself in your own home, you have no one to go to. I'm sitting there, I'm stressed and the doorbell rings."

At the door, as if on cue, was a representative of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Tanner attended an SEIU organizing meeting that night, found herself giving an impassioned speech and joining the union. "At that point I realized I wasn't alone anymore," she recalls. Thus began her commitment to improve the working conditions of Illinois child-care providers who contract with the state.

This week, Tanner is expecting her paycheck to reflect the first rate increase she's gotten in nearly seven years, thanks to a new contract negotiated by child-care workers in SEIU. The contract will provide opportunities for professional training in year two and, by the third year, access to health care. It's the first time a union has successfully represented the home-based daycare work force.

Recruiting new union members

Around the country, unions are reaching out to America's daycare staffs, preschool teachers and full-time babysitters, using innovative approaches to recruit members of the poorly paid and largely female child-care work force, estimated at two million. Care of children is among the lowest-paid professions, averaging $8.68 hourly. Preschool teachers earn $11.81 hourly, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Both professions bring in less than a rock splitter at $13.66 an hour.)

Meanwhile, the ranks of union-represented child-care workers are growing. More than 350,000 child-care workers are affiliated with SEIU, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the United Child Care Union and its sponsor, AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

"This is definitely a strong labor movement," says Melanie Rincon, a home-daycare provider for 21 years. Based in Santa Rosa, Calif., Rincon now works-full time as a campaign organizer for AFSCME.

"The majority of home providers don't have sick time or health insurance," she says, pointing out the easily overlooked -- yet entirely crucial -- relationship of child-care to economic productivity. "They enable California to keep working. Without child care, California would stop. The wheels would not turn if we did not provide the care."

Worthy wages

The nation's second-largest teachers' union, the AFT has focused largely on organizing among preschool teachers and the staffs of daycare centers. Earlier this month, the AFT petitioned members of Congress to support better pay on May 1, which they designated "Worthy Wage Day."

Low wages are widely believed to be the prime reason the child-care field is so unstable.

"There's approximately a 30 percent annual turnover in child-care settings," says Leslie Getzinger, spokesperson for the American Federation of Teachers, which counts 10,000 child-care workers among its 1.3 million membership. "You're dealing with a revolving-door staff. … The people who leave are often the best teachers."