28,000 Day Care Providers Join UFT
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By welcoming 28,000 new members, the city teachers union is heading into uncharted territory that will see its makeup and perhaps its mission change.
The drive to sign up the day care providers — many of them black and Hispanic women who live in housing projects, have never attended college, and have never taught a day of school — who watch low-income children in their homes mainly on the state’s bill, increases the size of the United Federation of Teachers by more than 25%, to about 138,000 active members.
The influx of new workers gives the UFT more members than the group that touts itself as New York City’s largest public employees union, District Council 37, which has 121,000 members, a spokesman, Rudy Orozco, said.
The UFT’s organizing drive was the largest in the city in several decades, and the biggest single infusion of members into the UFT ever, far bigger even than a push by the union leader Albert Shanker to bring so-called para-professionals, teachers assistants who were predominantly black and Hispanic, into the union amid racial rancor in 1970.
“Anyone who thinks that the union movement in this city has lost its vibrancy …” the UFT president, Randi Weingarten, said, as a cheering roomful of women, and a few men, wearing white and blue UFT T-shirts and hats, and waving signs reading “WE WON!” drowned out her words.
Working with a community-based advocacy group, the New York Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the teachers union spent two years lobbying for unionization for the day care providers. The groups argued that unionization would help the workers — whose contract work with the state earns them an average of $19,933 a year, just over the federal poverty line — as well as the children they care for. Only low-income children, many of whom live in subsidized housing projects, qualify for the care.
After facing resistance from Governor Pataki, who said allowing the workers to unionize would be an invitation to expand pension and health plans, inflating the state’s tax burden, the UFT’s fight hit a turning point this spring, when Governor Spitzer signed an order enabling the workers to unionize.
Their entrance will extend the UFT’s agenda outside city schoolhouses, opening conversations with state officials who oversee the day care program.
Ms. Weingarten said she plans to push the state to professionalize the home day care profession by investing in health benefits, higher wages, and training to improve their skills.
Citing a study showing that preschool can reduce incarceration rates and welfare costs, she said the extra expenses would pay off. The announcement capped a busy month for Ms. Weingarten, who has been charming opponents of teachers unions with her support for policies many union leaders oppose, such as last week’s announced plan to base teacher pay on student performance.
“Between this and the announcement last week,” the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, said, “Randi is more than on a roll.”