Testimony of Randi Weingarten before General Welfare Committee New York City Council

Nov 15, 2005 12:17 PM

Good morning and thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify before this committee. I commend Chair Bill De Blasio and other members of this committee for bringing to the fore the issues facing New York City’s home-based childcare providers. The consequences for our city are enormous.

You may be asking yourselves, “Why is the president of a teachers’ union speaking about issues confronting family childcare providers?” I want to answer that immediately.

This summer, the UFT, working with its state affiliate NYSUT along with ACORN, the community-based organization which so effectively advocates for the interests of low to moderate income families, launched a massive effort to help the state’s family child care providers organize a union. To date, more than 6,000 workers in the city have signed authorization cards saying that they wish to be represented by the UFT. A rally in Harlem on Oct. 26 drew about 1,000 workers clamoring for union rights. At that rally and other meetings throughout the city, family childcare providers have enthusiastically expressed their commitment to fight together to improve the system of early education and care for the children of our city’s poorest residents.

As you know, the UFT has long been a proponent of high-quality early childhood education, including the need for voluntary, universal pre-K. Research shows the importance of developmentally appropriate and high-quality learning opportunities for children in the first years of life. Family childcare providers are among the first links in the chain of education that a child receives. Along with parents, family childcare providers play a critical role in a child’s early learning.

The UFT is pursuing legislation in Albany to grant family childcare providers the right to unionize. While we intend to address many issues through the collective- bargaining process, I appear before you today to talk about what can be done immediately to improve the working conditions of family childcare providers, both licensed and license exempt. As you will hear from the family childcare providers who will testify following me, we ought not to wait to begin improving the system in which they work.

Our first objective is obtain a fair hearing and grievance procedure that family childcare providers can use to resolve payment disputes, licensing issues and alleged problems identified during safety and health inspections of providers’ homes.

We have outlined this demand to the city agencies that have regulatory authority over family childcare providers. On Sept. 30, at a meeting convened by the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, representatives of the UFT and ACORN and several childcare providers sat down with representatives from the city Department of Health, the Fire Department, and the Human Resources Administration. (The Administration for Children’s Services was invited, but could not attend.) During the past six weeks, the UFT has continued to discuss the creation of a grievance procedure with numerous city officials, but to date no agreement has been reached with the administration.

The city’s inaction prolongs the unfairness that these childcare providers have had to endure. The personal stories I have heard from providers are distressing.

Tammy Swan, a Manhattan provider, received no money between May and July of this year for a child she took care of. The parent told her the child was still eligible for a subsidy, and HRA never notified her to the contrary. Tammy fell behind on bills and paid late fees on credit cards as she waited for payment.

Carol Hart-Brown, another Manhattan provider, took care of a boy from December 2003 until April 2004, but despite her repeated requests to HRA to pay her, she only got the money she was owed – a total of $1,300 – in May of that year.

A Brooklyn provider, Angela Sierra, is owed $5,000 for taking care of twins every Saturday between 2002 and 2004. She says she has visited HRA offices five times, mostly recently in April of this year, to ask for the money. On the last visit, an agency official told her that he would send her a letter, but he never did.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Our proposal is a simple one: The city should work with the state to establish a fair process to adjudicate disputes between individual family childcare providers and the city agencies that oversee the system.

Here’s what we propose in a nutshell:

· A grievance procedure that cuts across agency boundaries. All government offices overseeing family childcare providers should use the same grievance form and that form should be available in multiple languages, reflecting the many immigrant communities in this city.

· When the city receives a grievance form from a provider, it should assign a case number to the grievance and notify the provider in writing or by e-mail that the grievance has been received and recorded. The notification should include the assigned case number.

· All payments should be made within two weeks of the date that the childcare provider submitted a request for payment.

· Payment disputes should be resolved within a month of the date that the childcare provider submitted a written request to solve the problem.

· Within a reasonable period of time after the city receives a grievance form; the city should convene a meeting or conversation in which the affected parties attempt to resolve the dispute.

· When that meeting or conversation does not resolve the problem, the city should – again, within a reasonable period of time – schedule a hearing before a neutral and impartial third party who would render a binding decision.

I would appreciate any help that the City Council and this committee can give to persuade the city to commit to a grievance process.

I’d like to close by reiterating that if we want high-quality early education and care for this city’s children, we need a work force that is valued and treated with respect. When we improve the working conditions of the city’s 30,000 family childcare providers, we improve the learning conditions of hundreds of thousands of children in New York City.

Thank you for your attention, and I’d be happy to answer your questions.