Ten Thousand Quebec Home Daycare Workers on Strike
Rally by early childhood home daycare workers on the first day of their general strike, September 21, 2020.
On September 21, facing an impasse in negotiations with the
Quebec government for the renewal of their collective agreement, 10,000
early childhood workers who work in home daycares, members of the
Federation of Early Childhood Workers of Quebec (FIPEQ-CSQ) began a
general strike for their
rights and dignity.  As is the case with so many
workers in health care and social services, these workers are facing
untenable conditions, which is driving many to leave the
profession. One of the main problems is that home daycare workers are
considered self-employed and therefore receive a subsidy per child
instead of an hourly wage which is the case for workers in child care centres. The union
reports that for the average home daycare worker, that subsidy works
out to about $12.42 per hour. The union wants an arbitrator to evaluate
its members' pay scale and wants those wages to increase to $16.75 per
hour, but the government is refusing.
Anne Dionne, a Vice-President of the FIPEQ-CSQ, said the poor conditions are
causing a major shortage of daycare workers in the province.
"Professionals are either leaving, closing, or worse -- no new ones are
interested because of the poor conditions. In total 2,500 positions are
vacant across Quebec," she said. To avoid
a general strike, the home daycare workers held rotating strikes for
several weeks and organized demonstrations, including one in front of
the Quebec National Assembly, to press their demands. The refusal of
the Quebec government to settle the negotiations by entrusting the
assessment of the pay scale calculation to an
independent third party left them no choice but to go on strike, they
said. 
September 16, 2020 action by early childhood home daycare workers in Sherbrooke to press their
demands.
The union clarified that the demand that home
daycare providers earn the equivalent of $16.75/hour instead of the
current $12.42/hour is based on the hourly wage for a non-trained,
level 1 educator in a childcare centre. In
a September 20 press release Valérie Grenon, President of the
FIPEQ-CSQ said that home daycare workers "are true early childhood
professionals,"
pointing out that "They are at the same time an educator, food manager,
bookkeeper,
janitor, and so on." Grenon underlined this point by citing a
Léger survey commissioned by the union to point out that
family childcare
providers who are members of the FIPEQ-CSQ have an average of 16 years
of experience. As part of the current negotiations,
FIPEQ-CSQ proposed that the Ministry of Families consider the
non-trained educator at level 1 as a comparable job to home daycare workers, provided that a
family childcare provider job evaluation committee is set up to make
recommendations on the actual tasks and jobs to be compared. "This
was already a major concession for our organization," states the
president of the FIPEQ-CSQ in the press release. "All that remains to
be settled is the calculation, but the Ministry of Families refuses to
table its way of calculating." Since the beginning
of the negotiations, the Quebec Minister of Families has been very
arrogant in responding to the demand of the home daycare workers for
recognition of their profession and improvement of their conditions.
Speaking on a radio program, Minister Mathieu Lacombe said that
providing early childhood care at home is a way
of life that the workers have chosen, and that they know what to expect
in terms of working conditions and wages. "It's not cheap labour, it's a
choice. It's a choice made by self-employed women who make that choice
knowing how much they're going to get." He repeated the same thing at
the National Assembly on September 22, adding that the
demands of the strikers are unreasonable and beyond Quebeckers' ability
to pay. The striking home daycare workers have
persisted in their just struggle and say that their fight is part of
the overall movement to improve the working conditions of women workers
everywhere. "The message we are sending to the
government today is clear: women are saying 'no' to a degrading wage
below the minimum wage. We are not second-class workers. And more than
just their income, family education providers are on the front lines
for families and demanding better services for the future of their
children," says
the FIPEQ-CSQ in a press statement dated September 21. "These women are the
first link in our education system; they are striking not for
themselves, but to save the system and meet the needs of families. The
situation is critical." The strike of the 10,000
home daycare workers clearly points to the fact that the shortage of
thousands of home child care providers for already licensed spaces will
not be resolved without first improving the working conditions of home
daycare workers. 
Montérégie, September 18, 2020
Longueuil, September 18, 2020
Saint Thérèse, September 18, 2020
Trois-Rivières, September 17, 2020
This article was published in
Number 64 - September 24, 2020
Article Link:
Ten Thousand Quebec Home Daycare Workers on Strike
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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