childcare providers

Congressman David Cicilline met Wednesday with local child care workers to discuss the need for high quality care that pays a living wage.

“It’s time for Congress to take action to ensure that high quality, affordable child care is accessible for every American family,” said Cicilline. “And that the childcare workforce can access the training and wages they need to make a living.”

Cicilline joined a forum of 11 child care workers, state representatives, and local parents to discuss House Resolution 386, which recognizes the need for better child care for the working parents.

Among possible solutions identified by the participants on Wednesday, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour for child care workers was the most popular.

“They want us to better ourselves, but we need help,” said Nichole Ward, a certified nursing assistant and mother of two. Ward spoke of the difficulties finding care for her two children while working and going to school at the same time.

Ultimately she had to ask her family to watch her children as childcare proved too expensive, a common solution for working families. Ward explained that her children had “fallen behind.” in their educations. Her mother and sister “aren’t teachers,” unlike the child care providers, and cannot provide the vital early childhood development.

“Between 2007 and 2015, funding for Rhode Island’s subsidized child care program shrank by 30 percent (from $71 million to $51 million),” said Rachel Flum, senior policy analyst at the Economic Progress Institute. “The reduction was primarily in state support for the program which was accomplished by reducing eligibility – causing hundreds of families to lose coverage.”

Cicilline cited a University of California, Berkeley study that found child care workers are paid less than $10 an hour and wages have stagnated with no real increase since 1997 while at the same time child care costs have doubled.

“Pay the workers like their work matters,” said Marti Murphy with Fight for 15, an advocacy group currently celebrating victories big and small across the nation.

Cicilline expanded that childcare is becoming the “biggest number, bigger than rent, bigger than food.”

“Things are different now than 25-years-ago,” he said, talking about the need for Congressional action. “We can’t pretend it’s 1950…and recognize the reality that both parents are working.”

Added Chas Walker of 1199 SEIU New England, “From 1-5-years-old are the most important years in a child’s life. We have to value the people providing the care for them.”

The income gap between those who entertain the affluent and those who provide childcare services for poor and middle class parents and their children is massive, according to the Providence Journal. By way of comparison, URI basketball coach Danny Hurley’s state subsidy is more than 26 times larger than what the average community-sponsored childcare provider earns.

Hurley earns $600,000, Politifact RI confirmed, making him the highest paid state employee. Earlier in the week, a page 1 story compared the starting salaries of teachers to the childcare providers who will most certainly earn a little bit more if and when they sign their union cards.

If you read really, really far down into that story, you’d have learned that the average pay these providers earn is $20,028.86.

According to the Providence Journal:

The state paid the licensed childcare providers $23,028.86, on average, last year, in amounts that varied from the $224 paid to a woman on Hunts Avenue in Pawtucket, to the $76,991 paid the top-earner.

It would appear that many of the people paid by the state to take care of other people’s children are, themselves, poor enough to qualify for financial assistance from the state and federal government.

The ProJo has dedicated a lot of time and energy to these childcare providers, many of whom it reports are poor. Why? The editorial page won’t run anything from advocates of the organizing efforts and the news coverage reads as if it was reported by Fox News (I would absolutely positively welcome any disinterested parties to weigh in on this).

The Providence Journal isn’t the only well-heeled local organization to take an intense interest in this unionization effort. So has the Freedom for the Prosperous, a public-sector despising local think tank that purports to care for Rhode Islanders economic well-being. By way of comparison, I would love to know how much both of these two groups have invested in their campaigns to call attention to 600 people who earn on average $20,000 getting a raise.

Whether it’s how much we pay a basketball coach, how much childcare providers earn, or why the ProJo and the Freedom for the Prosperous spend their time and money on certain topics, it’s all evidence that modern American capitalism seems to reward making more money rather than adding value to the community.

Ed note: For clarity, I think Danny Hurley is both an awesome basketball coach and well-worth $600,000 a year to Rhode Island taxpayers. I passionately believe the childcare workers who take care of poor and middle income children have among the most crucial roles in our community – they are helping out with the kids who have a high likelihood of falling through the cracks and every additional penny we invest in this function will reap huge though often invisible dividends for taxpayers AND the citizenry.

Tag: childcare providers

Cicilline stands with child care providers

Coach makes 26 times what childcare providers earn