Day-care workers get pay raise despite councilman's objections 2000-04-18 by Dean A. Radford Journal Reporter

Chris Vance of Auburn tried again yesterday to convince fellow County Council members to vote against the creation of a five-year pilot program to increase the pay and education level of child-care workers.

But the council didn't buy his argument that the county has no business using public dollars to subsidize the pay of private workers and that the program is really a union ploy to increase membership.

The council voted 10 to 3 to approve the five-year pilot program, the first of its kind in the nation. Besides Vance, Eastside Republicans Rob McKenna and David Irons, who represent parts of South King County, voted no.

Irons of Sammamish said the county should use the $300,000 budgeted for the program's first year to make room for 90 children who are waiting to get into a county-subsidized, day-care center.

The pilot program, proposed by Executive Ron Sims, drew bipartisan support on the council. ``We have a crisis in child care,'' said Jane Hague, a Bellevue Republican.

Supporters say that children, especially preschoolers, need to see the same caretaker day in and day out to learn to trust adults. But the industry has a 40 percent turnover rate, mostly because of low pay and lack of benefits.

The King County Child Care Program will work out the details of the program, with final selection of the 14 or so day-care centers in July. Each worker will receive a $1-an-hour county subsidy, up to a maximum $20,000 for a day-care center.

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), April 18, 2000

Answers

Well if you have a problem with this you can vote your Council Member out of office (assuming you live in King County). But the reality is that adequate day care is a big issue for a lot of suburban voters, and this kind of thing plays especially well to them, including a lot of the Republicans (the KC Council does have a Republican majority).

They're just giving the people what they want. But again, if the people don't want this, they COULD let their representatives know.

-- Patrick (patrick1142@yahoo.com), April 18, 2000.

Not sure why Mark didn't post the rest of the story....

In King County, wages average $8.53 for a teacher in a child-care center and $6.98 for an aide.

The county also will spend $100,000 the first year to give 100 day- care workers 45 credit hours of specialized child-care training.

In return, the centers must offer benefits packages or enter into a collective-bargaining agreements with workers. Fourteen centers have already joined the service workers union.

The state is offering a similar subsidy program.

The council defeated a Vance amendment that would have stripped the collective-bargaining provision from the ordinance.

``How does it help kids to sign a collective-bargaining agreement?'' Vance asked, calling the ordinance a ``cynical piece'' of special- interest legislation.

The provision is designed to involve employees in workplace issues, said John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, which helped develop the programs for the county and the state.

The program won't work, Burbank said, if employees are ``passive participants. They need a voice.''

Dean Radford covers King County. He can be reached at dean.radford@southcountyjournal.com or 253-872-6719.

Patrick said "But the reality is that adequate day care is a big issue for a lot of suburban voters, and this kind of thing plays especially well to them, including a lot of the Republicans"

Strings......there's always strings attached. Sounds like special interest to me. Since when does being Unionized have anything to do with decent childcare? It just means jobs will be protected for those who are incompetant.

What will we subsidize next? McDonalds?

-- Marsha (acorn_nut@hotmail.com), April 18, 2000.

My wife runs a licensed in-home day care. I figure my wife would require 3 additional kids to justify the salary of an additional person. Plus, I'd feel guilty paying the individual substantially less than $10/hr.

The extra employee and kids would mean a lot more headaches and paperwork for us. There's no motivation for us to want to expand the business, at all. I don't think a $1/hr. subsidy is going to help, that much.

My wife is funny, though. She runs a day-care, but she doesn't have kind words for women who choose to have kids and then work. She feels they should stay at home. So, if I felt the way she did, I would get out of the business, altogether.

So, using my wife's logic, society would be better served if they simply paid mothers to stay at home!

-- Matthew M. Warren (mattinsky@msn.com), April 18, 2000.

"Well if you have a problem with this you can vote your Council Member out of office (assuming you live in King County). But the reality is that adequate day care is a big issue for a lot of suburban voters, and this kind of thing plays especially well to them, including a lot of the Republicans (the KC Council does have a Republican majority). They're just giving the people what they want. But again, if the people don't want this, they COULD let their representatives know. "

And right now the state legislature is struggling to figure out how to restore tax equalization funds. If King County/Seattle has enough to pay bonuses for childcare workers, I would assume that they have their public health and police fire needs already covered, so we needn't worry about funding them with state monies?

-- (mark842@hotmail.com), April 18, 2000.