There will be no respite for daycare centre workers this spring, as they embark on another three-day strike today. The government is still refusing to respond in good faith to the demands of the 13,000 unionized workers, who want to improve services for children and ensure respect for their profession.
“There are more and more children in need of special support,” explains Anne-Joëlle Galipeau, president of the CSN union representing daycare workers in Montreal and Laval. “We're asking for government support to do a better job with these children, to increase the number of meetings with specialists, to increase meetings with parents.”
She observes that this increase in special needs makes the work increasingly difficult, adding, “We're already in a labour shortage because conditions aren't improving.” To reduce this shortage, daycare workers are demanding, among other things, wages similar to those in the public sector.
A striking example of this disparity is that of food supervisors. The North Star was able to find a job offer for a kitchen helper at CIUSSS of Montreal North with an entry-level salary of $24/hr. The maximum wage for cooks in daycare centres is $22.70/hr, after 6 years' experience. Qualified daycare educators start at around $41,000 a year, compared to nearly $53,000 for a preschool teacher.
This disparity also creates a vicious cycle: the entry-level salary is not attractive and is comparable to other unskilled jobs, so fewer students are training to become daycare workers. And this makes the job even more difficult.
Due to the labour shortage, there is often a shortage of replacement workers. When a worker is sick, “it falls on the worker's shoulders to say, ‘if I'm absent, I have to call all the parents to say they can't bring their child to the daycare today.’” There are a lot of workers who come in sick, even though they would normally have taken their personal leave, their sick leave, so as not to have that burden.”
Galipeau is appalled by the situation. “The program at Cégep Gérald-Godin has closed its doors. In another region, there are only six workers studying, three of whom don't want to do this for the rest of their lives. There's no new generation. No one wants to enrol.
She adds: “It's not necessarily people who don't want to do this job. It's still a great job. It's really the working conditions that aren't enticing enough to say, 'I'm going to make this my profession, and then I'm going to thrive in it until I retire.'”
Other problems raised by the union include: the growing use of private agencies, the erosion of workers' right to participate in daycare management, educator burnout, a high number of injuries and budget cuts that affect, among other things, the quality of infrastructure and the food served to children.
Faced with all this, daycare workers voted on March 19 in favour of a possible unlimited general strike. In the meantime, they plan to continue holding strike days to increase the pressure.
“It's only when we go on strike that the government decides to negotiate,” declared Stéphanie Vachon, daycare representative for the CSN's federation of health and social services workers. on March 18. She added that if there was movement at the bargaining table, it was “because the 13,000 daycare workers of the CSN are mobilizing to make themselves heard.”