Child Care Information

 

Past union support of child care

 

CCC’s interview with Katie Jordan, head of the retirees of Workers United, formerly the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. She recalls a model child care facility run by her union between 1969 and 1983 in Chicago. (Transcript and video interview available by request from childcare@wwhpchicago.org.

 

The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) contributed to bringing women’s issues onto the labor agenda. As both a labor and a feminist organization, CLUW lobbied for national child care legislation, formed a Child Care Task Force that visited other countries who had these services, and encouraged labor and management to negotiate child care programs in their collective bargaining agreements. CLUW framed its support of child care as a commitment to family life rather than as just a benefit to women. [For a good discussion see pp. 142-144 of Silke Roth’s Building Movement Bridges: The Coalition of Labor Union Women (2003).]

 

Benefits of quality child care and consequences if it is unavailable.

 

1. “The Benefits of Early CHildhood Development Persist Over Generations” - By John Pepper
2. Cohn, Jonathan. “The Hell of American Day Care: An investigation into the barely regulated, unsafe business of looking after our children,” New Republic, April 15, 2013, https://newrepublic.com/article/112892/hell-american-day-care
3. “When Brain Science Meets Public Policy: Strategies for Building Executive Function Skills in the Early Years,” Institute for Child Success, January, 2015. https://readynation.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/brain_science-1.pdf
4. Bradbury, B.; Corak, M., Waldfogel, J., Wahsbrook, E. Too Many Children Left Behind:The U.S. Achievement Gap in Comparative Perspective. Russel Sage Foundation, September, 2015. https://www.russellsage.org/publications/too-many-children-left-behind
5. Chen, Michelle. Day-Care Costs Can Drive a Family Into Poverty Before a Child Reaches Kindergarten but they’ll probably impoverish her teacher first,” The Nation, December 7, 2015. http://www.thenation.com/article/day-care-costs-can-drive-a-family-into-poverty-before-a-child-reaches-kindergarten/

 © 2018—Working Women's History Project