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‘Ripped-off’ providers rally for new market rate
Dec 11, 2008 3:37 PM
Providers Patricia Williams (left) and Juanita Holloway cheer the speakers.
On a cold November evening, more than 800 New York City home-based child care providers turned up the heat in the historic Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem demanding an end to the city’s delay in paying them the higher wage approved by the state more than a year ago.
Scores of city and state elected officials and educators rallied with the providers, charging the city Administration for Children’s Services with violating federal law and state mandate by refusing to pay the new market rate for providers that was approved in October 2007.
“You are being ripped off,” Brooklyn Councilman Bill de Blasio told the angry audience on Nov. 20. “Let’s not be nice about it anymore. The law is being broken.”
In a video message from her office in AFT headquarters in Washington, D.C., UFT President Randi Weingarten told the crowd, “The state has already allocated funds for the city to pay you the new market rate, and the city has no right to withhold it. Our providers are feeling the stress of these tough times just like everyone else. But more importantly, this is a matter of basic fairness.”
The city’s 28,000 providers — among the lowest paid workers in the metropolitan area — are in negotiations for their first contract. They are the newest members of the UFT.
Following a spirited rally for the new market rate outside ACS headquarters in Manhattan in September, ACS officials pledged to schedule a meeting with union representatives but later reneged on that promise and has refused to meet with them since.
Tammie Miller, chapter chair of the UFT child care providers, called the ACS stonewalling “a great disservice not only to providers but also to the children, families and communities we serve.”
Pat Boone, executive board president of the New York Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and a former child care provider herself, pointed out that every county in the state except New York City is paying the new market rate to providers.
“The new rate is not something we want but something that is owed to us,” Boone added.
“We are not here to ask the city to buy us a Mercedes,” said Jenny Rivera, a Manhattan provider for 20 years. “If they paid me the approved 2007 rate, I would make $1,200 more a year, enough to pay for learning materials for the kids, to pay my bills on time and to provide a better environment for the children to learn and develop.”
Home-based child care providers receive government subsidies to care for and educate children from low-income working familes before, during and after school.
Among those attending the rally was William Burgos of the Bronx, who noted that his wife works 10 to12 hours a day caring for nine children plus three of their own for low pay and no benefits. “The amount of income is too high to qualify for WIC [the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program] but not enough to live on,” he said.
Calling the city’s behavior “shameful,” Chapter Chair Miller noted that because of poverty level wages, many providers face closing down. “Providers follow the law and the city should, too,” she said. “Our work is crucial to the city. Parents can’t go to work if we can’t work.”
“No more asking!” UFT Vice President Michael Mulgrew told the cheering crowd.
“So I’m asking you,” he continued. “Are we ready to take this all the way? To never, ever stop until we get this done?”
The applause was thunderous.
Mulgrew urged the elected officials present to sign a letter to ACS Commissioner John Mattingly requesting that the agency comply with federal law and pay the market rate.
State Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, one of the providers’ strongest supporters in Albany, said, “This is the best time to invest in day care. You are preparing the next generation of workers, the architects of the future of this nation.”
Councilman de Blasio will hold a hearing on the issue on Dec. 17.
