October 18, 2022
Child care advocates and allies across Ontario mark this day annually. But collectively, we are all indebted, each and every day, to the dedicated child care workers and early childhood educators (ECEs), especially those CUPE members, who provide vital care, support, and education to children in their early learning years.
As we saw during the most challenging days of the pandemic, CUPE child care workers and ECEs provided child care for essential workers; their work was a crucial part of a common effort to keep society’s wheels turning. Even as child care workers and ECEs endured COVID outbreaks in child care centres and classrooms – even as they were forced to fight for PCR testing, adequate masks, and HEPA filters for their workplaces – even as they struggled to keep children, families, and themselves safe – their work then, as now, sustained families, working people, businesses, industry, and public services.
But even as we honour the skill, care, expertise, and professionalism of child care workers and ECEs, we should remember a few important truths, because they are what will drive our work in the months and years ahead:
- We can’t have a child care system without child care workers and early childhood educators – and right now, we don’t have enough of them. Workers are exiting the sector at a faster rate than they can be replaced.
- With growing staffing shortages, families, municipalities, and employers are finding that the current system often can’t meet existing child care needs. Without better wages that are part of a comprehensive workforce strategy, the shortage of workers will only increase.
- Ontario has a child care crisis because the system is based on low wage work performed predominantly by women. But the solution is clear: create good, stable, well paying jobs that encourage people to train for and remain in the sector.
- We need a real workforce strategy if we want to staff the child care spaces we have now, let alone for the ones we need to build. The Canada-Wide Early Learning & Child Care (CWELCC) plan in Ontario has an $18 per hour wage floor and $1 annual increase to a cap of $25 per hour. That’s not enough to attract and retain staff: child care workers need real wage improvements, starting with a minimum $25 per hour for all staff and a minimum $30 per hour for registered ECEs.
- The Ford government believes it can hoodwink Ontarians into believing it has provided child care for all by signing on to the federal child care agreement. Families, however, know the reality: they continue to face long wait lists, high fees, and centre closures and they are still waiting for the provincial government to deliver child care that is universal, accessible, non-profit, and affordable.
We know child care will be the linchpin of the post-pandemic economic and social recovery; we ignore its importance and the concerns of its workforce at the peril of our own social and economic well being. Going forward from this Child Care Worker and Early Childhood Educator Appreciation Day, we must move beyond the current system, lurching from crisis to crisis, to one that truly values child care workers, ECEs, and children in their early learning years.
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