Victory for Child Care Providers in New York

In a move that could have national ramifications, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer last week signed an executive order giving the right to unionize to New York City's 28,000 home child care providers and thousands more throughout the state.

Tula Connell writes at FireDogLake that this is only the first step for the child care providers.

Lots of people think workers don't join unions because they don't want to. The nation's flawed federal labor laws are a big reason standing in workers' way. But this example illustrates yet another reason why U.S. workers are hampered from easily forming unions. New York's day care workers, like home care workers in California and Illinois, and others across the nation, can't just automatically form unions.

The day care workers, who, on average, are paid less than $19,000 a year and have no pensions, health insurance or paid sick days, first needed a law that gave them an employer -- in this case the state's Office of Children and Family Services -- before they could join a union and negotiate a contract. The New York United Federation of Teachers/AFT (UFT/AFT) will work with the day care workers, and AFSCME's Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) will reach out to the home care workers.

The New York Times reports that New York becomes the seventh state to give home-based child care providers the right to unionize, but Spitzer's approval could give union organizers momentum to target other states.

Not everybody was happy with the development. E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, wrote in the New York Post said that "with a stroke of his pen," Spitzer had undermined any effort to control the budget in the state. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the new legislation may result in fewer child care spots -- perhaps as many as 15,000 fewer spots, according to the Times -- because of the added costs to the city.

9:25 AM ET | 05-18-2007 | permalink