Early Care workers turnover rate is high.

Health care benefits and paid sick leave are rare for child care workers. Many rely on public benefits like food stamps and Medicare to fill in these gaps.

And all of these vary drastically from center to center. One worker talked about how moving from one day care center to another resulted in a drastic difference in benefits. For example, she talked about how at the old center she worked, she only received one day of paid holiday for the winter season, whereas her current center, she received 10 days of holiday. She also mentioned how her new center offers a 401k package where her previous center didn't, healthcare, 2 weeks of paid time off per year, sick days, and pays $3-4 more than her previous center.

One key thing to note is that the day care center she works at caters to more well off folks. The tuition for a month of child care at her current center is $1500 per month. This child care worker loves her job. She said that she finds it so refreshing to be able to work with kids all day. She also mentioned how the kids loved her, how some of them wouldn't be able to fall asleep or would refuse to eat if she wasn't in the room. Parents have often told her how their kids would talk all day about how much they loved her when they got home. And it is disheartening that this level of care and service is only available to parents who are willing to pay $1500 a month for child care.

Another interesting thing to note was that this worker was told by her employer that she should not share her wage with others, especially not with her fellow teachers. This could be interpreted many ways, but one way that stands out is that it could be a technique for suppressing worker power, preventing workers from sharing knowledge about what they deserve and giving them the data to effectively advocate for that. In a similar vein, the worker I talked to was unfamiliar with the concept of a union, and was presumably not a part of one.

In fact, the vast majority of child care workers are not currently represented by a professional organization or union on the job. Only 10 percent of center-based child care workers are represented, compared to the 45% percent representation for K-12 teachers.

This last point is especially important. The fact that so many child care workers aren't a part of a union leaves them powerless to fight against the exploitation they face. Though the factors leading into a child care worker's sub-par working conditions are complicated and varies depending on the center they work at and the people they serve, this lack of unionization is undoubtedly a big part of why child care workers are treated so poorly.

This lack of unionization among child care workers is caused in part by the fact that in many parts of the US, it is still illegal for child care workers to unionize. As late as September 30, 2019, California became only the 12th state to provide early childhood educators with collective bargaining rights.

The child care industry has a long way to in terms of providing livable working conditions and wages to its workers. At the same time however, parents are already paying too much for childcare. The national average for child care costs anywhere from $6,000 - $19,000 a year. With a limited income stream coming in to centers from parents and child care workers deserving basic livable wage, healthcare, and paid days off, we find ourselves in a tight bind.

A potential solution to this would be transitioning to public investment in our early child care systems as other industrialized nations have. According to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, Sweden and Denmark both spend 1% of their government spending goes to early education and childcare. Finland and Iceland are close behind with 0.8% of their spending going to early education and childcare. The US only spends 0.35%.

Part of this transition would have to include securing better workplace support and compensation for child care workers. Child care workers should receive at least equal compensation and benefits as kindergarten teachers.

Child care worker unions should definitely be at the forefront of this fight to make child care a public good. And we need to support them at every step of the way.

It would be interesting to look at this transition of child care to a public good with public investment under the lens of Bargaining for the Common Good.

According to Marilyn Sneiderman and Joseph McCartin in, Common Good Bargaining, "one of the most significant innovations to appear during the last decade of struggle for the labor movement and its allies is an initiative called 'Bargaining for the Common Good' (BCG)"

"BCG is an ambitious effort to redefine collective bargaining. Its practitioners have sought to bring community allies into the bargaining process by forging strategic alignments around a shared commitment to the preservation of public services and use of the public sector as a tool for building a fairer economy for all; they have sought to challenge the narrow parameters of bargaining in order to highlight the structural inequalities and exploitative power relations that are undermining the public sector and broad-based prosperity; and they have sough to hold financial elites accountable for policies that are starving the public sector."

Advocating for child care to be invested in as a public good fits well under this framework as transitioning to this could result not only in better working conditions and wages for workers, but more affordable prices for parents as well. Moreover, making child care a public good could give child care workers an extra edge in terms of bargaining power, as the State would become its employer instead of just a capitalistic actor who could fall back on nebulous market forces to justify unfair treatment. BCG found its roots in the public sector, and seems to fight very effectively in the public sector.

Examining this occupation under the lens of the labor movement, and specifically the feminist labor movement, we would find further things of note. The fact that this field is almost entirely female means this industry should be central to the conversation about feminist labor. According to Boris and Orleck, in Feminism and the Labor Movement: A Century of Collaboration and Conflict, "when feminists and unions worked together, both benefited. Labor gained when it understood women's issues as crucial for the advancement of the working class. The women's movement was at its strongest when its membership and agenda crossed class lines." (p34) Thus, child care workers should be central to both the women's movement and the labor movement. It is interesting, then, how in that overview and analysis of the history of feminism and labor how there was absolutely no mention of childcare workers, outside of women organizers advocating for public child care as a feminist issue.

The child care worker industry touches so many pressing issues today. It is a labor issue. It is a feminist issue. It is a POC issue, and it has so much potential to bargain for the common good. The US needs to invest in child care as a public good now, and we as citizens and workers need to fight to make that happen for the good of us all.