ECEBC’s $20 per hour strategy for British Columbia’s early childhood educators makes a good point about the need for higher wages, but misses the mark. A living wage campaign makes more sense than the $20/hour campaign because child care workers are paid poverty wages, a fact missed when we demand a dollar amount instead of demanding a living wage.
It is true that quality child care requires reasonable compensation to keep people in the profession, to recruit qualified care workers, and to pay workers at levels that reflect the actual value of child care and early education. Paying child care workers at least $40,000 per year ($20/hour) is a needed step in the right direction, but $40,000 is simply too low a wage to reflect the actual value of child care work. We should first push for an above-poverty wage, then start pushing for adequate resources for all B.C. children and families.
A $20/hour wage simply isn’t sufficient to resolve the challenges of turnover and recruitment that plague the child care sector, and therefore promotes the wrong message about the value of child care or the resources required to provide adequate care to children and families. Sure, shifting wages up will improve things, but not solve the crisis. Our messages should be clearly focused on two points: (1) Poverty wages for any workers are unacceptable, including child care workers; (2) Child care is valuable, highly skilled work that requires adequate resources provided on an equitable basis.
The $20/hour strategy muddles these points, by not communicating that currently most child workers are paid poverty wages (unjust regardless of the value of our work) and by advancing a wage that doesn’t reflect the value of the work ($20/hour is simply too low to recruit and retain qualified child care workers). Qualified child care workers are competitive at pay rates far greater than $40,000 per year. Workers with the skills and education at levels required to be an effective educator or care worker can demand wages far beyond $40,000 per year, as evidenced by wages of social workers, public and private school teachers, and most health care workers.
Moreover, child care should not be entry level work for other fields. Children and families benefit with experienced workers and a stable child care workforce. We should not be demanding a dollar amount that is based on an undervalued wage at the entry level of other professions. Incremental improvements are needed, but each step should communicate the value of our work because each step forward should get us to the final step of adequate, equitable and universal care for all B.C. children and families.
While the demand for at least $20 makes the point that current child care wages do not reflect the actual value of child care work, this point becomes muddled because the demand focuses on a dollar amount that’s below the actual value of our work. Even when child care work is paid $20 an hour, this wage and resources to pay it will remain grossly inadequate to meet the needs of B.C.’s children and families, and we need to make this point even as we demand to get beyond the current tragedy of child workers getting paid a poverty wage.
In contrast to a $20/hour strategy, a living wage strategy is based on the quality of a wage, rather than on the quantity of a wage (quantity as expressed in dollars per hour worked). This means that our demands for living wages communicate that a poverty wage is unacceptable in terms of universal human rights, regardless of the kind of work being performed. For human rights values to be realized, the value of a job is irrelevant to the value a person’s time spent working. Paid employment should not result in poverty. Period. Nobody should be paid less than a living wage, because an economic system based on poverty wages is an affront to human dignity.
Nobody should be expected or need to work for a wage that puts them in poverty, even if the work performed is undervalued by decision makers and leading political forces. This is as true for highly valuable work, like child care, health care, education, community building, production of food, public safety, art and cultural work, and public sanitation work. It is also true of less valuable work, like production and distribution of non-essential consumables or delivery of unnecessary personal services.
No matter the purpose or social value of a job, wages and working conditions should be worthy of human dignity. This is the point of a living wage, a wage that is based on a set of values reflecting what a person requires to live in dignity – above poverty – within a given place and at a given time. When the process for setting the level of a “living wage” is a public process, such as through a city wage commission, then the public is expressing an important value. Living wage benchmarks become a reflection of this value, which is more meaningful than workers simply seeking higher wages as part of job market negotiations.
Child care workers demanding to be paid a living wage, rather than a $20 wage, are better able to communicate that we are not simply seeking a raise as we are instead seeking to be treated with basic respect and dignity. Child care workers demanding a living wage are not just seeking wage increases for themselves, but are also advancing the living wage cause for all workers. We do this simple virtue of pegging the lowest acceptable wage for our work to the living wage benchmark for all work.
This helps our struggle become part of a universal struggle for justice and fairness, rather than about which kind of work should be paid more or less. A living wage has nothing to do with the value of a given job because it speaks only to value of human life. We should all be paid above poverty wages – regardless if we work in a spa, in a field, in retail, as a janitor, in fast food, as a nanny, in a daycare or as a sanitation worker – because human life is sacred. Low-wage workers benefit from demanding a living wage first, as the first demand before demanding reasonable wages based on other values.
Child care workers, like all underpaid workers, benefit from city governments pegging their lowest wage to living wage standards, even if not employed by the city or its contractors. That’s because government recognition that work should not result in poverty provides a platform for workers in need of basic dignity and respect. Most child care workers, including most daycare workers, family care providers, and nannies, are paid poverty wages. We are part of the vulnerable workforce in general, made vulnerable in part by unacceptable wage and working conditions as set by the law. When we demand, as underpaid workers, that every worker be paid at least a living wage we make ourselves less vulnerable and extend the benefits of fairness and equity to everyone in our community.
