It's all sunshine and roses, evidently, for the child care providers in New York who have just unionized.
New York is one of 11 states where workers like Rivera -- not day-care center employees or nannies but child-care providers working out of their own homes -- are permitted to unionize. Organizers argue improving conditions for these poorly paid workers will translate into better child care options for working parents.
The story goes on to discuss how great unionizing will be for day care providers, but, somehow, doesn't explain how this will benefit either the children or the parents. Will the in-home day care providers somehow become more intelligent? Educated? Loving? Who knows?
Many parents enjoy in-home day care for several reasons. The biggest assets in-home care has over institutionalized day care is the stability it provides and the fact that in-home care is considerably cheaper than those big day-care-in-a-box-type places.
Be prepared for costs to go up with unionization. It always does.
"The lessons that unions learned from organizing home care have been brought to bear on child care," she said.
Not everyone applauds unionization for home-based child care workers. Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposed the idea, which he said could cost up to $100 million a year in increased wages and benefits.
Read: taxpayers will now subsidize in-home day care providers.
Unions have learned the lessons of organizing day care workers. They know that unionization rates have dropped dramatically and they have to find new sources of union workers to support the fat cats at the top. That means collecting union dues from some of the poorest paid workers.
Helen Blank, director of leadership and public policy at the Washington, D.C.-based National Women's Law Center, said that in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, the average annual earnings of self-employed child care workers ranged from $6,209 in New Mexico to $16,367 in Washington.
What this union-leaning story doesn't tell readers is that people who run day care out of their homes keep overhead low and set their own hours. Some workers only have after school care. Some only work a few hours a week. Some take kids around the clock. Some provide meals and others don't.
On top of that flexibility, there are state and federal programs for child care providers which also help pay for the costs of running a day care, such as food allowances and tax breaks on parts of one's home used for the business. In other words, the pay is low, but a combination of programs and tax breaks helps the worker keep more of his/her money.
And this isn't even talking about the people who take cash and don't pay taxes on it.
Nobody wants day care workers to be exploited. They are certainly among the hardest working people in America. And I personally preferred in-home care because it was the most like family. But unionizing these workers will increase costs and create bigger problems for the parents who need this form of child care.
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