Home Day-Care Providers Still Chasing First Contract;
UFT: ACS Pleading Poverty
By DAVID SIMS

The 28,000 home day-care providers who joined the United Federation of Teachers in 2007 are still locked in negotiations with the state Office of Children and Family Services, looking for a contract to improve their wages and health-care. Many of them make only $2 per hour with workweeks exceeding 50 hours, according to the UFT.

TAMMIE MILLER: Providers just scraping by.

The UFT Providers voted to join the UFT last October, two years after they first organized, following then-Governor Spitzer's enactment of an Executive Order last May permitting them to organize. Negotiations for a contract with the OCFS got underway on Feb. 29, but no agreement has yet been reached over four bargaining sessions with the OCFS, the most recent one in July.

Lofty Rhetoric But No Deal

At the first negotiation, the OCFS was represented by Assistant Commissioner Bill Gettman, who affirmed he was "here for the kids you take care of, for the respect you deserve for the work you do and for quality care for kids." Janice Molnar, the Deputy Commissioner for the Division of Child Care at the OCFS, attended a subsequent negotiation session.

JOHN B. MATTINGLY: State extravagant at our expense.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the UFT, calls the workers "the first link in the chain of education that a child receives."

So far little progress has been made, according to Tammie Miller, one of the chief representatives for the UFT Providers. Ms. Miller said that while OCFS said it had allocated extra funds to the Administration for Children's Services to get providers' pay up to market rates, the ACS has not made an acceptable offer.

"The ACS is really not telling us anything," Ms. Miller said. "They say, 'We don't have the money to pay providers,' while providers are just hanging in the balance, suffering evictions and threats of their utilities being cut off in the midst of all this. The only thing that's really happening is the ACS misappropriating funds," referring to the recent embezzlement scandal within the agency.

ACS: State Sticking Us With Tab

But ACS Commissioner John B. Mattingly said the state funding was inadequate even as a stop-gap and it was unreasonable to expect the city to make up the difference during a budget crunch.

He said in a statement that OCFS had reallocated $26.8 million from the Child Care Block Grant as a one-time payment to the city while calling for rate increases to the child-care providers. ACS, however, "projects the annual cost of increasing affected rates for all applicable providers to be $53.4 million per year into the indefinite future, with no further state funding committed."

This shortfall, Mr. Mattingly continued, would force ACS to either come up with more than $20 million in additional city funding now when the municipal budget is "already experiencing shortfalls," plus the full $53.4 million in future years, or eliminate subsidized child care "for many hundreds of low-income, working families."

He said no decision had been made yet on what ACS would be able to do under the circumstances.

Often Paid Below Minimum

The providers seek to formally define their hourly payments, hoping to put them more in line with New York State's minimum wage. Another matter that the union is trying to address is that pay usually decreases after the child being looked after is 18 months old, a disparity Ms. Weingarten called "perverse" at the February negotiation session.

"Replacing infant care with the preschool needs of a developing toddler is equally, if not more, demanding, particularly because we understand the importance of high quality early childhood experience to lifelong learning success," Ms. Weingarten stated. In contrast, the pay of Teachers in the UFT does not vary depending on the age of the child being taught.

Other issues being addressed by the providers include the market rate of pay, which has remained at 2005 rates despite the state requirement that it conduct a market rate survey every two years. The negotiations also include demands for health insurance, pension benefits and vacation time, although providers are now entitled to take advantage of the UFT and ACORN benefit programs.

Ms. Miller said that although members of the UFT Providers are "less trusting of the OCFS ... in absence of a contract, funding, or any other benefits," they are still waiting on more negotiation dates from the OCFS. Providers also recently met with Governor Paterson at an event in New York, and made an appeal to him to intervene on their behalf. "He did express his commitment to moving this forward," she said. "That is the ray of hope and sunshine that we are counting on."