CUPE Ontario warmly welcomed the news that the child care workers’ campaign Worth More! was awarded the Atkinson Foundation’s Good Fight Prize, which recognizes campaigns that promote decent and dignified work. At the same time, the union noted that the win underscores the many ways in which the Ford Conservatives are working to prevent high-quality childcare from becoming a reality for families across the province.
“We are so proud that Worth More! has been recognized in this way, because it’s really a recognition of all the workers who helped make this campaign a success,” said Juanita Forde, chair of CUPE Ontario’s Social Service Worker Coordinating Committee. “The fight for decent pay is an essential part of the fight for safe, affordable and high-quality child care. No child care worker in Ontario should have to choose between doing the job they love and affording care for their own children.”
CUPE Ontario was one of the campaign’s partners, alongside the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC) and the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Ontario (AECEO). It praised the successful organizing that underpinned the campaign and helped achieve an increase to the wage floor for child care workers by $5 an hour and other improvements to their working conditions.
“Child care workers were recognized for advocating around a cause that everyone understands is important for Ontario. Everyone except Doug Ford and his cabinet, that is,” said CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn.
“We must never forget that Doug Ford’s Conservatives have put up roadblock after roadblock to achieving $10-a-day child care in this province. Just two months ago, the auditor-general pointed out in a special report the government’s failure to create the number of child care spaces it promised, while overall demand has tripled, leaving thousands of families without the care they need for their children.
“We can attribute a large part of this failure to Conservatives’ fixation on for-profit child care. For the province to be eligible for the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program, 70% of the spaces it funds must be in not-for profit providers. Yet the Ford government continues to favour and to push private child care operators, even as these businesses shun smaller towns and cities because they can’t make enough money there.”
Hahn gave as an example the City of Sarnia, which sought to set up municipally run, CWELCC-eligible child care centres. But it was stopped by the Ford Conservatives until it had exhausted all options for attracting for-profit operators to the city. For their part, private operators could not find enough profit to extract from $10-a-day child care and requirements for decent work.
“Doug Ford and his Conservatives are the obstacles to highly affordable, high-quality childcare, staffed by a well paid workforce, in this province. Even as we celebrate this win of Worth More!, we should remind ourselves – and them – of that fact,” said Hahn.