For Immediate Release
State Given 12,000 Cards in Little Red School Wagons
Elected Officials On Hand As UFT, ACORN Submit Petitions To Let Home Day Care Workers Vote To Join Union May 17, 2007
May 17, 2007 12:44 PM
The United Federation of Teachers and the community group ACORN today gave the State Employment Relations Board petitions from more than 12,000 home day care workers who asked to hold an election to join a union.
As state and city elected officials, labor leaders and community activists looked on, UFT President Randi Weingarten helped pile boxes of the petitions onto five little red wagons to be taken from a park on West 54th Street to SERB offices three blocks away.
The petitions were filed less than a week after Governor Eliot Spitzer signed an executive order allowing the providers, who are among the lowest-paid workers in the region, to form a union.
The UFT and ACORN have been working to unionize the providers for about two years in what has been the largest organizing drive in New York in decades. Spitzer’s order allows the more than 50,000 providers across the state to organize. The UFT wants to represent the 28,000 providers in New York City. Signatures from 30% of the total group – fewer than 9,000 -- are needed to trigger an election. The Civil Service Employees Association will organize day care providers in the rest of the state.
New York is the eighth state to let home-based providers unionize. Once SERB verifies the signatures it will schedule an election, which would likely be conducted by mail ballot. The process could take several months.
“This is just the beginning,” Weingarten told the group. “Now we start the campaign to become the New York City providers’ elected labor representative and build the structure necessary for a strong organization. Then, and only then, will the providers finally begin to get the respect they deserve for the important work they do.”
“We and the UFT look forward to an election that will allow day care providers to join a union so they can get the respect and living wage they deserve for the important work they do with children, said Bertha Lewis, executive director of NY ACORN. “These providers are professionals and they must be treated as such.”
Among the elected officials and labor leaders at the press conference were: Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat; State Senator Malcolm Smith; former State Senator Nick Spano; Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council; City Comptroller William Thompson Jr.; City Council Member Robert Jackson, chair, Education Committee; Council Members Bill de Blasio and Joseph Addabbo Jr. and former State Senator Carl Andrews, who heads the New York City bureau of Gov. Spitzer’s Office of Governmental Relations. Several providers also addressed the crowd.
Home day care providers receive government subsidies to watch, care for and educate children from low-income families in pre-school and after-school settings. They provide meals and snacks, help children with reading, learning colors and numbers, help with homework, direct safe play and change diapers.
A 2006 ACORN study showed that the average annual wage for family and group family providers in New York City is $19,933. The federal poverty line for a family of four in 2004 was $18,850. The providers have no health benefits, pension plan or paid vacations.
