8,000 Ohio Child Care Workers Choose AFSCME

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/04/16/8000-ohio-child-care-workers-choose-afscme/

Thanks to Clyde Weiss of AFSCME for letting us know about the effort of child care providers in Ohio for a voice on the job. You can read more from AFSCME here: http://www.afscme.org./publications/17998.cfm

More than 8,000 in-home Ohio child care providers recently voted overwhelmingly for a voice on the job through Child Care Providers Together (CCPT)/AFSCME Ohio Council 8.


hese Ohio child care providers voted to join AFSCME, a right they gained because of an executive order signed by Gov. Ted Strickland (center).


Veronica Flowers is among them. Flowers works 14-hour days caring for six children in Cincinnati.

This is a great day for Ohio’s child care providers. We finally have a voice to improve our working conditions so we can take care of our own families and, at the same time, continue to provide the quality child care working people need. Everyone wins with a union.

Gov. Ted Strickland (D) signed an executive order in February that laid the framework for this victory. Says Ohio Council 8 President John Lyall:

This victory is good news both for the parents who depend on quality, home-based child care and the professionals who work to provide it. By improving the lives of these providers, we can help assure that they can afford to stay in the profession and get the added training many of them want, but can’t afford.

Brenda Gentry, a child care provider in Columbus, calls the vote “a historic victory:”

Joining with AFSCME has helped us gain more respect and a stronger voice—and will lead to a contract with improved rates and provisions.

Child care workers around the country have been fighting for a voice at work. In May last year, 60,000 New York home-based child care providers won bargaining rights, as did 40,000 Michigan workers in December 2006. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) signed a similar executive order in August 2007, giving some 10,000 child care and health care workers in that state the right to join a union.

Note that I am a PROUD AFSCME member.