Crawford Strategies provided strategic consulting and public relations services to an SEIU Healthcare 1199NE campaign to organize home-based family child care educators in Rhode Island and improve the state’s early education system. We developed messaging that focused on the educational and economic benefits of allowing early child care educators to organize.
Project Details
Hundreds of family child care educators in Rhode Island are paid through the state’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), which helps low-income parents afford child care for their children and reimburses child care providers for their services and expenses. Despite being paid by the state, these educators could not form a union to advocate to expand training and professional development, improve recruitment and retention of qualified child care educators, and work with state officials to strengthen the CCAP.
In 2013, Crawford Strategies worked with SEIU Healthcare 1199NE organizers and family child care educators to highlight the need for state legislation that would give family child care educators a process to form a union. We drafted and edited written material, including op-eds, press releases, and fact sheets, and worked with childcare providers and parents to prepare testimony and speak to reporters.
Amid a Rhode Island economy that was beginning an economic recovery but still struggling with high unemployment, our messaging emphasized the need for additional qualified family child care educators in order to allow parents back into the workforce. We used parent spokespeople to highlight the importance of parental choice and access to quality child care options, and highlighted the stories of parents who had left the workforce because they could not find affordable, accessible child care.
After months of aggressive campaigning, the Rhode Island General Assembly approved, and the Governor signed, legislation that gave family child care educators the ability to unionize. Within months of the legislation passing, family child care educators voted overwhelmingly, by a count of 390 to 19, to unite together in SEIU Healthcare 1199NE. Their first contract gave the educators 7-percent raises over 2 years.
Selected Press Clips
NBC 10, RI bill would allow home-based day care workers to form union
Providence Journal, R.I. childcare providers can now unionize
Go Local Providence, SEIU Reports Unionization of RI Childcare Workers
RI Future, SEIU on organizing effort of child care providers
Providence Journal, Proposed R.I. contract provides computers, vacations for at-home daycare operators