History is Made: First Day Care Contract in Nation
by Anne Silverstein
CSA turns 50 on Jan. 30, 2012. Each month, the CSA News will highlight a milestone in the union’s history, and the union will sponsor special events culminating with a gala dinner-dance on April 27 at the Waldorf Astoria®. This month: Day Care Directors and Assistant Directors join the union.
Ten years after CSA’s first organizing meeting as a federation of supervisory groups, the Executive Board voted to admit Day Care leaders who ran the city-subsidized Day Care Centers, feeder programs to the city schools.
The vote on May 30, 1972 stated that CSA would form a separate citywide district for Day Care Center administrative personnel. Dues were established at .95 percent of the maximum annual salary for each category.
It would be four years before these Day Care members would win a contract.
CSA had to fight the city for the right of day care workers to select CSA as their bargaining agent. That took two years and a protracted legal battle; in the fall of 1974, the State Labor Relations Board ruled that CSA had the right to be the focus of an election in which Day Care workers would decide whether to join the union. The November 1974 election affirmed Day Care members’ resolve to be unionized.
Still, the powers-that-were fought Day Care members right to negotiate a contract. In 1975, CSA’s Day Care member picketed at the Day Care Council’s annual meeting on Nov. 20.
Finally, a year later, the city’s Day Care Directors and Assistants signed the nation’s first Day Care Director’s contract negotiated by a union on Sept. 28. While health benefits are now part of the package, the most significant aspect of the contract truly was the fact that a contract existed at all.
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