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15 search results for: "child care providers"

1

The Deal for Child Care Providers

Katherine Gregg has more details on the agreement that Governor Gina Raimondo has agreed to give independent child-care providers whose clients receive government subsidies and who have organized under the SEIU:

In the current budget year, which began on July 1, the agreement promises 3-percent reimbursement rate increases, with an additional $10 per week for each infant. 

In the second year of the contract, the rates rise at least 1 percent, with additional rate increases of 1 percent, 2 percent and 3 percent pegged to education-levels. 

Those working on a GED   — or high-school equivalency diploma — would get 2 percent. Those with three college credits or more would get 3 percent. The 4 percent would go to those with a college-level “associate degree,’’ which very few of those in this mostly female workforce have now. 

The majority (61 percent) had a GED, but 14 percent did not even have that and only 4 percent of the childcare providers surveyed by SEIU 1199 in January had a college education. 

The new contract anticipates expanded “access to college-credit bearing courses in English and Spanish.’’

They also all get free computers for online billing and training purposes.  (Whether that means the state will pay for their Internet service, I’ll have to check the contract, which I’ve requested regularly from the state for months.)

Readers may recall recent news about a related program to pay for child care workers to receive college degrees in early childhood education (to add even more unneeded early-grade teachers to the Rhode Island marketplace).  That program is not limited to the SEIU members, but they’re included.  The Rhode Island Department of Education tells The Current that the total grant is projected to be over $3 million, with $1.8 million passing through T.E.A.C.H. RI, $1.1 million going through the Community College of Rhode Island, and $38,000 going through Rhode Island College.

According to Kathy Gregg, the SEIU members receive a $500 bonus for becoming licensed.  Once they’re licensed, providers working out of their homes are eligible for the T.E.A.C.H. scholarships, which (in addition to paying for almost all of the tuition) give participants $585 in “bonus pay,” $50-per-semester travel stipends, and up to around $300 per semester in weekly “paid release time” (that is, approximately another $1,000 in additional cash).  As reported above, once they’ve earned college credits, and then a degree, they get more money from the state in pay.

With this package of giveaways handed over by the governor and the General Assembly (which had to approve the budget), it’s not surprising that the SEIU local 1199 is able to demand one of the highest dues rates in the country.  According to Gregg, the rate is 2%, capped at $65 per month (or $780 per year).  Of all of the similar contracts listed on ChildCareUnionInfo.com that have a set payment or a cap, only Illinois is higher (2.1% capped at $75 per month).

If all 526 members hit the cap, state taxpayers would be sending the SEIU $410,280.

2

SCOTUS Implication: RI Can’t Force Child Care Providers to Join or Pay Union

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Harris v. Quinn, today, should reverse efforts in Rhode Island to force independent child care providers whose clients receive state subsidies to join a union or to pay “free rider” fees for a union’s negotiating services.

By way of review, last year, the General Assembly passed, and Governor Chafee signed, legislation to allow independent child care providers who have clients receiving subsidies through the state’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to join a labor union.  The legislation also required providers who didn’t want to join the union to pay a “service charge” for “negotiation and administration of the written contract” that could amount to as much as full dues.  It’s a gray area, but presumably, the state can’t pay parents different subsidies depending on whether or not their providers are in the union.

(In the House, the first five sponsors of the bill were Slater, Diaz, Almeida, Blazejewski, and Handy; in the Senate, they were Goodwin, Jabour, Pichardo, Crowley, and Ruggerio.)

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity became deeply involved in pushing back against the suspiciously tilted elections that unionized the providers under the SEIU.  The Current-Anchor  also paid the election some attention, including incidents of state police threatening to arrest private citizens who wanted to observe the proceedings.

According to the governor’s office, negotiations with the SEIU are currently underway, but members of the public (who will be paying the bill) will have no window into them until the deal is done.

The Harris ruling, written by Justice Samuel Alito, pertains to personal assistants for disabled recipients of state aid in Illinois, often their parents or other relatives.  However, the reasoning is the same — mainly that the providers are not full state employees, that their immediate clients are not the state, but the families that they serve, and that the negotiable aspects of their relationship with the state are severely limited.

It is therefore almost certain that a lawsuit by any child care providers who do not want to pay the SEIU “service charges” out of their pay checks will prevail.  It’s always been questionable whether the union could do much for the providers, other than to siphon away money intended to help families pay for child care, but now providers will likely receive any benefits without paying any costs.

For that reason, the Center is calling on the executive branch, in Rhode Island, to halt the proceedings and the legislature to repeal the law.  As the press release states, the Center is also considering the possibility of requesting a stay on any action that would commit taxpayers to unconstitutional costs.

5

The SEIU May Get a Child Care Reward for Its Political Support

Here’s some legislation that would be a reward for the SEIU for all of its political donations during last year’s election.  Unsurprisingly, the bill summary is misleading:

This act would expand the tiered-rate structure for the childcare assistance program to meet the federal benchmark for access to high-quality childcare for all age groups of children, with higher rates paid to licensed child care centers that have achieved higher quality ratings in “BrightStars”, the state’s quality rating and improvement system. A requirement that childcare providers must raise tuition rates for all other public or private paying families in order to receive higher state rates is removed.

The law already provides for tiered payment rates.  All this bill would do is dramatically increase the amount that taxpayers are required to pay.

Taking the taxpayer’s point of view puts another light on the section removing a “requirement that childcare providers must raise tuition rates for all other public or private paying families in order to receive higher state rates.”  Right now, the law simply states that taxpayers won’t pay more than child care providers charge their unsubsidized customers.  This bill would allow providers to charge those families who pay for their own care less.

One consequence of this change in incentives is obvious: To the extent that the market rate for child care is less than the government’s rate, providers will have incentive to fill up available space with subsidized customers unless families can pay more.  If this creates a crisis, then (from the Big Government perspective) so much the better.  The politicians will be able to cash in on the promise of giving away “free” care to everybody.

6

Generational Dads

As a angst-ridden GenXer, my first instinct in response to an article titled “Millennial ‘Mr. Moms’ turn out to be all talk” is to scoff, but to a large extent, their plight is mine, too.

According to Naomi Schaefer Riley’s article, the picture comes through in  opinion polls:

  • 70% of Millennial men say they’d stay home to watch the children if it helped the career of their significant others.
  • 78% feel childcare should be divided into equal shares.
  • But only 5% of Millennial fathers do the stay-at-home thing, with 85% working full time, 6% working part time, and 4% unemployed.
  • They also still tend to be the leading breadwinners in their families, with 60% bringing home at least 59% of household income.
  • And their attitude aligns with their realities, with 67% of Millennial men and women thinking it’s “very important” for them to support their families, while only 40% say the same for women.

In summary, Millennial men feel obligated to work (indeed, the economy that the Baby Boomers left us leaves most families little choice), they feel responsibility to work hard enough that they could be the sole source of income, if they had to be, but they still feel like they have to pick up an equal share of home workloads.  The whole picture certainly describes my circumstances — working from home for my family’s primary income while watching our toddler and picking up an equal amount of housework.

Given all this, contrary to Danielle Paquette and Peyton Craighill’s recent article in the Washington Post, it isn’t surprising at all that “three-quarters of mothers and half of fathers in the United States say they’ve passed up work opportunities, switched jobs or quit to tend to their kids.”  Child care is expensive, meaning that extra work must really pay well in order to make up for it, and parents tend to want to be involved in their children’s lives.

Naturally, the article in the Washington Post presents this as a problem for government to solve, but government involvement would be about the worst thing that our society could do.  Government incentives have played a large role in changing the decision making of families to get us to the point that families can’t live on a single income, in large part by pushing trends toward a more-egalitarian attitude more quickly than the culture was ready to do.

Perhaps we’re now seeing the culture absorb this change, with families reasserting the value of home life.  Subsidizing that trend might make it marginally easier for some families, but if history is any guide, it would make it more difficult for many more.  Somebody has to pay to subsidize child care, after all, and changing the financial calculation in favor of child care will make it more difficult for those families that would rather spend more time with their families to do so.

Of course, subsidizing child care leads families to rely on government and makes a special interest out of child care providers, which ensures votes and power.

 

7

Getting Out of the Union You Didn’t Know You Joined

Tom Steward profiles, for the Minnesota Bureau of Watchdog.org, a woman who receives state subsidies as a care taker for her special needs daughter.  Being generally supportive of labor unions, Renee Katz (no known relation) signed a card “supporting an election to form a union.”

She didn’t realize that meant she would automatically become a member of that union if it won the election.  So, “she was outraged to learn that 3 percent of their gross wages [i.e., subsidies for her daughter’s care] would be taken for dues for a union she didn’t realize she joined.”

With the Supreme Court’s ruling that her union (the SEIU) cannot compel either her membership or her dues-like “fair share fees,” Katz has been trying to end the payments.  It became such a hassle that she switched to a whole different care program:

But Katz turned to a different opt-out option. The care recipients she helps have since switched to another state plan, under which PCAs cannot be union members, due to employment laws.

“They (care recipients) didn’t want to deal with the union. They didn’t want them calling anymore, they didn’t want them hounding them,” said Belisle. “And they believe that their salary and tracking information the union wants, their address, their phone numbers and everything else, they don’t believe they (unions) have a right to them.”

As I mentioned during budget season, Rhode Island’s version of this issue is limited to child care providers (also SEIU), and although no details have been released, the dues appear to be substantial.  I’m still trying to get details of the contract, but on based on total dollars, it appears that the governor’s office and the General Assembly gave the union a nice boost in the first contract to forestall providers’ coming to Katz’s conclusion.  That is, our elected officials negotiated sufficiently generous terms that the providers will calculate that being part of the union is definitely in their interest.

And thus is captured another group with a personal interest (and union organization infrastructure) to ensure that nobody is ever elected to office who might actually negotiate on behalf of the taxpayers who have to subsidize the scheme.  One might quip that we taxpayers have, in effect, found ourselves having joined the union, too.  How many of us are imitating Renee Katz and, rather than trying to get out of the deal, are simply moving to other states, beyond the reach of the state government?

8

Keeping up Negotiations Under a Supreme Court Cloud

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Harris v. Quinn, which found that personal assistants for disabled recipients of state aid in Illinois could not be forced to be part of a labor union.  They aren’t state employees, and the state isn’t their direct client.  The people for whom they care are their clients, and they are a disparate group, not an entity with which they can negotiate as a collective.

That ought to have frozen efforts to implement a new Rhode Island law requiring child care providers to be part of a union if their clients receive state subsidies, and yet today’s Providence Journal Political Scene reports that negotiations are ongoing:

This was the initial answer from the Department of Administration’s policy director, Allison Rogers: “The negotiations are ongoing. Subsequently, the department is unable to provide any further comment at this time.”

When pressed recently on why the negotiations are still going on a year later, she said: “This is not an unusual length of time for negotiations, especially for a brand new contract.

It’s good that the reporters are keeping tabs on the progress or lack thereof, but it’s strange that the article doesn’t mention the cloud of unconstitutionality under which the negotiations are happening.

10

The Projo needs self awareness, not self defense.

The response PolitiFactRI editor Tim Murphy tacked onto the end of Jennifer Parrish’s objection to PolitiFact’s treatment of her is in keeping with something that I’ve found worrisome, lately.

Understandably, Murphy defends his department, but he does so in the form of an argument, without responding to or even acknowledging Parrish’s legitimate concerns. There’s no concession that the paper’s other sources were SEIU clients; there’s no explanation about why PolitiFact picked a particular fact to check; there’s no promise to look into claims made by the union. His commentary gives the impression of one party to a debate responding to another, not the disinterested judge that PolitiFact claims to be.

Murphy’s response brings to mind a recent column by Mark Patinkin, in which he defends newspapers — beginning with the cover price, but delving into the value proposition. He notes the number of reporters, some specialized; he talks about their watchdog function and the value of editors.

Arguments are possible, but for now I’d highlight what he doesn’t include: any sort of introspection about the paper’s responsibility to prove its value and question whether it’s doing the things that make a watchdog and layers of editors valuable. Maybe Rhode Islanders need and want a watchdog against powerful organizations that strive to change policy to their own benefit, not individual child care providers who are part-time advocates against those forces. Maybe skepticism about the watchdog function is justified when it looks like the DNC is doing the paper’s page layout.

Maybe when folks dip into the “splintered, random view” that Patinkin says he gets from online news, they see that the “informative portrait” they get through the paper is leaving out or amplifying details in a way that serves an agenda other than informing the consumer.

11

Politicized Fact-Checking Strikes Child-Care Unionization

A “mostly false” ruling on an issue related to unionization of child care providers offers insight into the operation of the Providence Journal’s PolitiFact team and may indicate that the target of the investigation is not the one who has been discredited.

13

Public Dollars for Business Benefits

An in-home child-care worker who has come forward supporting unionization of those with similar businesses has also advocated for a national tax on Christmas trees and special treatment of farms for the estate tax.

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