Child care workers at Ideal Child Service Group (ICSG), which operates five child care locations across Toronto, were locked out by their employer on October 5. Represented by CUPE 2484, these workers are fighting for a fair collective agreement that recognizes the value of their work and provides the wages, benefits, and working conditions necessary to support quality conditions of care in centers.
Their fight also exposes a broader political failure. While ICSG must be held accountable for its refusal to reach a fair agreement with its workers, the Ontario government also bears responsibility for the conditions that have left so many early childhood educators underpaid, overworked, and struggling to remain in the profession.
What are workers fighting for?
The workers employed with ICSG are not making extravagant demands. Workers simply want wages that reflect the cost of living in Toronto, protections when they become sick or injured, pensions, and staffing practices that provide children with the consistency and continuity they need.
According to CUPE 2484 President Jess Tomas, workers want the resources, staffing, and working conditions that will allow them to provide the best possible care. As they put it, “parents deserve the best for their kids, not just the bare minimum.” What benefits workers, they argue, also benefits children and families.
Notably, workers employed with ICSG are making significantly less than other child care workers in the city. Felicia Coleman, a lead registered early childhood educator in the infant room at BonAdventure Child Care Centre, told CBC that other Toronto child care workers represented by CUPE earn as much as $10 to $15 more per hour than the workers on the picket line.
These are sectoral problems and political failures
ICSG deserves to be shamed for locking out its workers rather than reaching a fair agreement that other child care centers have already demonstrated is possible. But the problem extends beyond one employer; it is also an issue of public policy.
Ontario’s $10-a-day child care system has been built around a public funding model purportedly intended to support the real operating costs of licensed child care.
Currently, Ontario only provides operators with enough dedicated funding to cover the government’s current wage floor it established for child care workers, which is $25.86 per hour for Registered Early Childhood Educators and minimum wage for staff working without qualifications. While operators receive a modest funding surplus they can and should use towards increasing staff compensation, operators may prefer to use this surplus for capital investments, other projects, or even profit, which is why we can see differences in compensation across the child care sector.
Rather than relying on individual operators to funnel their surplus into increasing compensation, the government should establish a dedicated funding strategy to support a wage grid that would establish wages of a minimum of $25 per hour for non-RECE staff and $30 to $40 per hour for RECEs, alongside pensions, paid sick days, and other employment benefits.
Child care workers should also not have to bargain for access to workplace injury protections as they are currently being forced to do. Working in child care is physically and emotionally demanding. Educators lift and carry children, work at floor level, and manage situations that can involve biting, hitting, and other forms of physical aggression. These demands can contribute to injury and illness, yet the government has not extended mandatory Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) coverage to child care workers like they have to other frontline care workers, including Personal Support Workers and healthcare workers. This is another policy failure.
Ultimately, public funding creates public responsibility. If governments are now the principal funders of a rapidly expanding child care system, they must also accept responsibility for ensuring that the system is staffed by a stable, fairly compensated workforce.
Why sectoral bargaining must be part of the solution
Of course, the government is unlikely to make these changes without significant pressure from organized labour and the child care movement.
While unionized child care workers can negotiate improvements that go beyond government-mandated minimums, most child care workers in Ontario are not unionized because organizing in the sector is difficult.
Sectoral bargaining offers a way to address this problem. Rather than requiring workers at each centre to negotiate improvements independently, sectoral bargaining brings employers, unions, and government to the table to negotiate standards across the child care sector. Depending on its design, it could establish common expectations for wages, benefits, staffing, and other working conditions.
This approach is especially important in a publicly funded sector. When government funding determines much of the revenue available to child care operators, it is not sufficient for governments to set funding parameters and leave workers to negotiate with the employer over whatever limited resources remain. Governments should participate directly in developing a sector-wide labour strategy that connects public investment to enforceable employment standards.
The fight at ICSG should therefore be understood as more than a dispute between one employer and its employees. It raises a fundamental question about the organization of the child care system: should decent wages and working conditions be determined by the bargaining power of workers at individual centres, or should they be treated as an essential component of a publicly funded universal service?
What you can do
In the meantime, it remains important to support these workers because each individual win builds momentum for larger change. Tell ICSG that they must return to the bargaining table and negotiate a fair agreement that recognizes the value of child care workers’ work.
You can support CUPE 2484’s campaign by:
- Sending a letter to Ideal Child Service Group management calling on the employer to negotiate a fair agreement and end the dispute.
- Joining workers on the picket line, where possible, to demonstrate community solidarity.
- Writing to the ICSG’s Board of Directors to express support for the workers’ demands.
- Sharing messages or photographs expressing support for the workers and the importance of decent working conditions in child care.
The workers’ demands are not opposed to parents’ interests. They are fighting for the conditions that allow them to provide the care children deserve.
If Ontario is serious about universal child care, it must stop treating the workforce as an afterthought. Children need stable relationships with qualified educators. Educators need decent wages and working conditions. And a publicly funded child care system must be designed to deliver both.
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