Published in Sign On San Diego, on Sept. 30, 2011
By Connie Vera
“Baby-sitters want a union? Are you kidding?” Some legislators and editors scoffed after the passage of AB 101, a bill now on the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown that allows child care providers to choose whether to form a professional organization for the purpose of collective bargaining.
Despite efforts to paint the issue in ridiculous terms, child care is a serious profession that allows hundreds of thousands of working Californians to keep working. Our profession is crucial to California’s economy, with a positive economic impact of $11 billion a year, and it deserves respect. Child care providers are speaking up and fighting for a recognized voice precisely because that respect is lacking. Currently, child care providers cannot decide to form a union in order to have a united voice, but the governor could change that by signing AB 101.
Why do we want a voice?
As a child care provider myself, I have devoted the last 10 years of my life to the kids and families I serve, many of whom are military families – and to other child care providers. I have a passion for the educational mission of our work, and I have done my best to share what I’ve learned with other child care providers. But despite all of this, I am powerless when it comes to making sure that I can keep my doors open, pay my assistant, pay my mortgage or continue to offer care to the working families who rely on me.
Child care providers like me, who provide care in our own homes, care for 240,000 California kids who qualify for a state child care subsidy. We each provide care for up to 14 children; we provide meals, structured learning, and everything else that children need to learn and grow. But we are increasingly going out of business.
In the past several years, the payment agencies that pay child care providers have become a growing problem for many child care providers, including myself. Payments are made late, are not made for the right amount, or are not made at all. Children we care for, we later learn, don’t qualify for payment. It’s a major disruption of our business, and it sends some providers out of business.
I personally know some of the 5,700 providers who were driven out of business by this inefficient, unaccountable system last year. Some of them had to file for bankruptcy. Some had their homes foreclosed on. And some just couldn’t keep doing the work they love and changed jobs in order to get off the payment roller coaster.
But as important as it is to fix the payment problems, they are just one symptom of a larger problem: a lack of respect.
And the very reason we deserve more respect is also the way in which we’ll make the biggest difference if we have an organized, strong voice: It’s about the kids.
Education isn’t just something that takes place inside a classroom. It starts as soon as a child is born, and it continues throughout each and every day. Every parent knows this. That’s why most parents who work try their best to find child care that is conducive to learning: a safe, loving, structured, and intellectually stimulating environment. No one wants to imagine their kids plunked down in front of a television or left alone and bored in a playpen.
Making sure that child care is professional, educational and of the highest quality is the no. 1 goal of child care providers like me. We want a united, strong voice so that we can improve standards, create training opportunities, and secure more federal early education funding for our state’s kids, just like child care providers who are united in a union have done in 14 other states.
Not only do we need to fix the problems in our system, we need to keep improving it and increasing the quality. That’s why I am urging Gov. Brown to sign AB 101 to support working families and the next generation.
Vera is a child care provider and resident of Chula Vista.