May 11, 2007 12:24 PM
Marking a milestone in the UFT’s two-year-long campaign to organize the city’s 28,000 home-based child-care providers, Governor Eliot Spitzer on May 11 signed an executive order granting the right to unionize to home-base child-care providers in New York State.
Governor Spitzer made the announcement after speaking about his commitment to immigrant rights, labor rights and educational opportunity for all New Yorkers.
“This is in keeping with our belief that it is important to extend rights to individuals — to extend the opportunity to negotiate, the opportunity to be heard, and the opportunity to complain,” said the governor at a press conference at CUNY’s Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.
The home-based child-care providers, who are reimbursed by the state for taking care of children from low-income families, needed the executive order because they are considered independent contractors by law.
"Any day you can strengthen child care in New York City and improve the lives of 28,000 home day-care providers is a great day," said UFT President Randi Weingarten, who launched the organizing campaign with ACORN . "But it is just the beginning of the providers’ quest to get the respect, recognition — and fair wages — they deserve for the important work they do.”
Family day-care providers in New York City earn $19,000 on average and have few or no benefits.
The state will now conduct an election asking home-based child-care providers if they want a union to represent them. In the city, the UFT is running unopposed to win the right to be the providers’ bargaining agent.
“Assuming we win the election, we will work together to get economic fairness for the providers and to help the kids that they serve,” said Weingarten.
The providers were overcome with emotion at the news.
“We made history here,” said Brooklyn provider Tammie Miller. “This is the best thing that could ever happen in New York City.”
Trying to summon the words to express the joy she was feeling, Bronx provider Melvina Vandross said, “It’s like a hundred birthday parties all at the same time.”