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Apr 12, 2007 5:21 PM
Push to unionize child-care providers reaches final stage
Children play in the back yard of the home-based day-care center run by Tabatha Cedeno (left) in Queens.
Back in the summer of 2005, the UFT, together with the community organizing group ACORN, launched an ambitious campaign to bring some 29,000 home-based child-care providers in New York City into the union fold. It was a logical step since quality early care helps children be more successful in school. As the parents and grandparents of public school kids, many of the providers are allies in the union’s other education battles.
More than 1,000 providers gather outside Governor Pataki’s Midtown office in May 2006 to call on him to sign legislation allowing them to unionize.
“It is natural for the UFT to bring family day-care providers into our union family, but more than that, it is also the moral thing to do,” said UFT President Randi Weingarten. “These workers are some of the most exploited in America and they need a union.”
The effort is entering a critical final phase this spring. Since last September, more than 16,000 home-based child-care providers have signed cards saying they want a union and they want the UFT to represent them. The campaign continues to gain ground in Albany, where Gov. Eliot Spitzer has pledged to issue an executive order granting providers the right to bargain collectively (this is needed because the providers are currently considered private contractors).
Providers receive free professional development from the UFT Teacher Center at union headquarters.
In the meantime, many providers are doing the necessary work of building the union by attending organizing meetings at UFT headquarters and in each borough, lobbying state lawmakers and going door to door in the city’s neighborhoods to spread the union message to other providers.
Providers are already reaping benefits from the organizing campaign. The UFT Teacher Center has provided free professional development on Saturdays to hundreds of providers. So far 42 providers, with the union’s help, have won more than $120,000 in back pay that they were owed. Thanks to UFT intervention, thousands of providers found out about subsidy increases they could apply for. And city agencies have streamlined and clarified many of their procedures and regulations in response to the providers’ complaints.
Volunteers, like this one in Staten Island, have been knocking on doors across the city to ask providers to sign cards saying they want a union and they want the UFT to represent them.
Home-based child-care providers, most of whom are women of color, work in their homes independently or through ACS contract networks. They receive money from the state for providing care and early education to kids from poor families. They earn only $19,000 on average while working 10 or 11 hours per day, and they have inadequate or no health insurance, no paid vacation, few or no sick days, no pension, meager reimbursement for food and basic supplies, and little training.
Volunteer to help home child-care providers unionize
How UFT members can help:
• Knock on doors of home child-care providers on a Saturday to remind providers to send in their ballot
• Make phone calls for a UFT phone bank to remind providers to mail in their ballots
• Attend get-out-the-vote rallies with providers to launch the election period of this organizing campaign
Call 1-212-598-9288 or send an e-mail to uftproviders@uft.org to tell us which activities you’d like to participate in.
Home-based child-care provider Tammie Miller reads a story to the kids in her care.
If the organizing effort is successful, the UFT and its state affiliate, NYSUT, would bargain with the state on behalf of all providers to improve the rates, benefits, training and working conditions of providers who work in New York City.
Here are a few of the thousands of providers who we hope will soon become proud members of the UFT.
Tammie Miller
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Tammie Miller is a published author of poetry and is currently working on a novel. She started to provide home day-care three years ago.
“I love getting to make an impression in their lives early on, nurturing children and meeting their needs on all levels,” she said. “With busy parent schedules, I help to provide what they may not be getting. My goal is to provide affordable, quality child care.”
Miller says the payment process is one of her biggest headaches.
“It is unfair to have to wait a whole month to get paid and then the payments are often late,” she said. “Parents are terminated and providers never find out so they continue to see the children and don’t get paid. Computers constantly get glitches. It takes hours on the phone to try to speak to a representative. How can you do this when you are supposed to be working with children?”
Fighting for a union was a no-brainer for her.
“We want a union because we all share the same problems, and as individuals we have no power,” she said. “But if we come together collectively, we can change things.”
Svetlana Basanelova
In her native country of Uzbekistan, Svetlana Basanelova was the director of a day-care center for 500 children, from newborns to 7-year-olds, for 12 years. So when she immigrated to New York City in 1997, it made sense for her to become a day-care provider, this time out of her home in Rego Park, Queens.
“I love children. I’m accustomed to being with them,” said Basanelova. “When you are working with children, you feel young yourself.”
Basanelova offers the youngsters in her care instruction in music, English and literacy, and she celebrates the different holidays and cultures.
She doesn’t advertise her services. The children — many from new immigrant families from the Russian-speaking community — come to her through word of mouth.
For Basanelova, union membership would mean the possibility of health insurance and paid vacation.
“The providers need health insurance because everyone has a health issue,” she said. “And everyone needs some vacation. Our job is very exhausting. It’s interesting working with the kids, but it’s very hard.”
Jenny Cardona
Jenny Cardona, who is originally from Puerto Rico, became a home day-care provider 16 years ago because it gave her the opportunity to take care of her two young sons at home while providing a valuable service to her community.
“I learn a lot from the kids in the way they express themselves,” she said. “It’s emotional for me to see the first year of a baby — when they start walking, laughing, talking … The babies give love for nothing.”
Cardona says that home child-care providers really have to love kids to do the work given how little the job pays. “If you work with just one or two kids, it’s not enough to survive,” she said. “You have to take on more kids, and it’s not always easy to get more. I have to pay bills. They’re not going to wait. It takes too long to get that check once a month.”
She says she is fighting for a union so the providers can have an organization to turn to. “The city and state will respect us more,” she said. “They don’t respect us now, but they will when we have our union.”
Melvina Vandross
Taking care of children is in Melvina Vandross’ blood. She loves having children around her, as her mother did. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, where she grew up, all the kids in the neighborhood came to her house day and night. She has been caring for children from poor families in her home for nearly two decades.
Vandross always worked closely with her children’s teachers, so as a home day-care provider, she works closely with the families of the children in her care.
With what she earns — less than $19,000 per year — Vandross is hard-pressed to support her family.
“My son recently needed tutoring, but I could not afford it,” Vandross said. “I am healthy now but if I get sick, I have no health insurance. After 18 years, I will have no pension when I retire.”
Vandross said providers need training in early childhood education to do their job most effectively.
“We are the ones who set the foundations for education,” she said. “It’s important that we have professional development. Love and nurturing are important too, but learning techniques to stimulate and educate young children are essential. We’re not asking for anything that the parents of the children we care for wouldn’t want us to have.”
Bridget Carruth
Originally from the island of St. Vincent, where she trained student teachers, Bridget Carruth came to the United States in 1983. For several years, Carruth taught middle schoolers in the Bronx. Because she enjoys teaching so much, she started a home day-care program in 1990 while she homeschooled her two daughters.
Bridget said it is hard to make a career of home day care given the low pay and lack of respect.
“I have wrestled with leaving this profession,” she said. “I could not provide for my children the way that I wanted to. One year a parent even had to help me out by giving me summer clothing for my kids.”
On top of that, she said, providers have to deal with an unyielding and unresponsive bureaucracy.
“Several times I was given code violations that were not justified,” she said. “Even though the license department now agrees and will take that red mark off of my record, the damage was done. Parents looking on the state Web site may have passed me by because of this red mark, and my business went down significantly.”
Her reason for helping to spearhead the organizing campaign? “I want a union so that I can have a voice in decisions that are made that concern us,” she said.
Gladys Jones
Gladys Jones got into home day care because she loves working with children and she always wanted to be her own boss. She opened her home-based day-care center four years ago.
“You know how you always wanted to play teacher when you were a kid? I’ve always wanted that — to be the teacher,” she said. “The work I do is very personal — more than the public education system in some ways. We’re the beginning — the first educators.”
One of the big family issues Jones has dealt with as a provider is domestic violence. She often cares for the children of women who are in shelters as a result of domestic abuse. “You have to be concerned,” she said. “Their trials and tribulations — you go through it with them.”
Jones notes that agencies like the city’s Human Resources Administration have a way of stripping the providers of their self-esteem. The lack of communication from the city and state agencies frustrates her. “We’re not recognized or respected, so why would they ever give us information?” she said.
Of the prospect of joining a union, Jones said, “We’re still independent, still working for ourselves, but the union is for the things we can’t do on our own — the things that take collective action.”
