Illinois Child Care Victory
More Than 49,000 IL Child Care Providers Choose SEIU As Their Union to Improve Services for 200,000 Children
|
|
|
Victory Fuels National Movement |
More than 49,000 Illinois home child care providers voted overwhelmingly (82%) on April 7, 2005 to join Local 880 of the Service Employees International Union.
“This is a big step toward winning improved rates and health coverage to make child care a stable job for adults so we can provide consistent care for children," said Angenita Tanner, a home child care worker in Chicago (pictured at right, speaking at the April 7 news conference).
"Working together we can improve services so the parents in our community can go to work and support their families knowing that their children are cared for, loved, and safe,” she said.
The home child care vote is the largest union election in Illinois history and one of the largest in U.S. history. In recent decades, only the vote by 74,000 home care workers in Los Angeles to join SEIU in 1999 saw more workers unite in a single union election.
|
|
|
Up Next: Improving Services for Children in 12 More States The Illinois vote is energizing efforts by family child care providers to join SEIU in 12 other states — California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin. Family child care providers from seven of those states came to Chicago Thursday to plan strategy for uniting in SEIU and to help celebrate the victory. |
“We expect this vote in Illinois will be the catalyst for more than half a million family child care providers across America uniting in our union, much the same way more than 300,000 home care workers have joined SEIU since the 1999 election in Los Angeles,” said Anna Burger, SEIU International Secretary-Treasurer.
The election capped a nearly decade-long effort by child care workers to unite in SEIU to improve child services in Illinois.
The vote was conducted after Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued an executive order in February that for the first time gave the providers the freedom to form a union.
The next step for the Illinois home child care providers is to elect a negotiating committee and begin bargaining with the state.
“Home child care workers will begin working with the Governor and legislature immediately to improve their reimbursement rates and achieve health insurance benefits," Helen Miller, president of SEIU Local 880.
"There is broad agreement that improving conditions for these providers will benefit the children of Illinois, and we will carry that message to Springfield until these workers get the improvements they and the children so desperately need," she said.
Public Services Issues
Today’s Crisis in Child Care
All too often, parents face difficult challenges in finding child care providers who meet their needs. More »
