Should Family Child Care Providers Strike?

Public school teachers in four states (Arizona, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky) have recently gone on strike and won increases in their salaries and more funding for public education.

Public school teachers make much more money, on average, than family child care providers.

Does this mean that providers should go on strike for more money?

It’s complicated.

There isn’t one entity for providers to strike against to protest their low income. Who would providers strike against? The state subsidy program for low payments, the state and federal government for their failure to offer meaningful tax credits, or parents for not paying enough?

The national child care system is financially unstable.

• Many parents face high child care costs that are sometimes more than the cost of college.

• Many family child care providers earn less than minimum wage while working more than 60 hours a week.

• The state subsidy program is woefully underfunded, to the point where providers can’t make a living wage caring for low income families.

• The federal child care tax credit hasn’t increased in decades.

In general, family child care providers shoulder the biggest financial burden in the child care system.At the same time, providers have little political power to make changes.

• They are isolated in their homes and tend not to assert their own interests in any coordinated fashion.

• Advocates over the years have had limited success in increasing the financial well-being of providers.

• Some child care unions have brought new money into the system.

• Some of the work by child care associations and Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies have had a minor impact.

What is to be done?I’m not advocating that providers take to the streets and strike until they get the resources they deserve.I do believe that the only long-term solution to the financial crisis in child care is more state and federal funding. State and federal governments heavily subsidize public education from age six through college, but offer only minimum support to the early childhood system.There should be:

• Higher subsidy rates for providers

• Significant financial incentives for providers who meet high quality standards

• Higher parent tax credits and other incentives for parents to stay home with their children.

At the same time, there is a general increase in licensing standards and quality rating systems, putting pressure on providers to take more training and submit to tighter oversight. But, there is no corresponding reward for achieving these higher standards!

As a result, we see a decline in the number of licensed family child care homes. One of the main reasons why providers go out of business is because of their inability to make a living wage.

How do we get more money into this system?

We need to put enough political pressure on those in power, so they must listen. What does this mean? Strikes? Maybe not. Then what?

Providers and their advocates should focus on building coalitions with parent organizations to lobby for higher subsidy rates and greater tax credits and other resources from state and federal governments.

I’ve been in the child care field for over 35 years and have been a part of many of these efforts over that time. Why haven’t we had more success?

I think, in part, it’s because we are not more outraged! And we are not sharing that outrage with the public.

The public school teachers demonstrated their outrage in a very public manner and state governments listened. They listened because it was in their political interest to listen. Currently, public officials face no consequences for continuing to ignore the plight of providers.

One way to raise the political pressure would be for family child care providers to refuse to care for low income families until they received higher subsidy rates. I know this would not be a popular position for most providers at this time.

However, as long as providers and their advocates accept the status quo, nothing will change.

I think our task is to figure out how to raise the level of outrage that will generate enough support from the public to get the results we all want.

Are you outraged? What can we do?

Tom Copeland - www.tomcopelandblog.com

Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:User-Strike.gif