Practice: Uniting a Largely Independent Workforce

The independent nature of working in home care or running a family child care program has impacted why care workers organize and been instrumental in determining how they organize.

In addition to the desire for better pay and benefits, the desire to organize partially stems from the independent and sometimes isolating nature of this work. Working from either a client’s home or their own home, home care workers and family child care providers do not necessarily have contact with other care workers. Pamela Franks, a family child care provider in Springfield, Ill. who has led her program for more than 20 years, explained the toll this work can take: “Just imagine day-to-day being isolated. … Some providers are isolated because it's just them. Being away from people and trying to provide all of these services. … It makes you burn out. People don't understand that this job is stressful.”

With limited support networks, care workers are often left to navigate complex systems and demanding jobs on their own. This can be especially daunting for family child care providers as small business owners. They provide care and education to children of different ages, run the business, support families, and navigate state and federal regulations, all while working very long hours. Franks said, “I wear a lot of hats. I’m the cook, I’m the teacher, I’m the nurse, I’m the social worker, and I’m the administrator.” Franks recalls that before family child care providers were unionized, she was unsure of where to go for support. She said there was “no one to talk to when the payments from the state didn’t come on time.” Connecting with others in their field has allowed care workers to support and learn from each other, and to form a collective voice to address their grievances. Franks said, “If I went down to the capitol and I’m yelling, ‘we need raises,’ they’ll look at me like I’m crazy. But if I have 30 or 100 more providers with me, they’re going to say, ‘yeah!’” Franks currently serves as an executive board member for SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana (HCII) in Illinois.

To reach care workers across work sites, union organizers have departed from their traditional methods of workplace organizing (focused on single employers, etc.) and employed community organizing tactics. These workers differ significantly from the traditional notion of a factory-based union worker, both in demographics and also in the kind of work they undertake, and therefore union methods had to evolve to meet their needs.

One of the first unions to do this was SEIU 880 Illinois (now SEIU HCII), which represents both home care workers and family child care providers. Beginning in the 1990s, union leaders who had previously worked at ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) brought their knowledge of community organizing to the fledgling union. They focused on strengthening workers’ voices and building political power. Myra Glassman, one of the original SEIU 880 organizers, recalls her early days organizing home care workers in Illinois: “Part of the strategy was figuring out who people were. … We needed to knock on the doors of 40 houses a day.”

With home care workers, union organizers knocked on every door and considered it a success if they reached 10 workers in a day and signed up one person to join the union. SEIU 880 organizers built on what they learned in the home care space and employed similar tactics to reach family child care providers. However, for family child care providers, organizers were able to access lists of people because running a child care program is a matter of public record.¹ Glassman recalls that “in child care it was more successful and we were able to get up to a couple thousand workers paying dues regularly.”

SEIU Local 880, which represents both home care workers and family child care providers in Illinois, was the first in the nation to organize home care workers and the first to secure collective bargaining rights for family child care providers that receive public funds. SEIU 880 organizers relied heavily on lessons learned from their experience with home care workers to organize family child care providers. SEIU 880 merged with two other local unions in 2008 and is now called SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana (or SEIU HCII). The union currently represents over 50,000 home care workers in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas and 15,000 Illinois family child care providers who participate in that state’s child care assistance program.²

Workforce Demographics

In Illinois, 39 percent of home care workers are Black, 38 percent are white, 11 percent are Latinx, and another 11 percent are Asian or Pacific Islander. Eighty-nine percent are women, and the median age of these workers is 49. Nearly one in four (22 percent) are immigrants.³ The median hourly wage for home health workers in Illinois is $12.25.⁴

The demographics of family child care providers in Illinois are similar to other states. Approximately 96 percent of licensed family child care providers are women and their mean age is 48.⁵ Just over 42 percent of family child care providers are white, 37.9 percent are Black, and 16.7 are Latinx. The greatest racial diversity is in the city of Chicago. The state’s child care workforce speaks over 20 languages, most commonly English and Spanish. More than half of family child care providers’ highest level of education is a high school diploma or GED. The median wage for child care workers in Illinois was $11.16 in 2019, across all settings.⁶

Home Care History

SEIU 880 used an organizing model for home care workers based on its experience as community organizers for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).⁷ A few staff members with SEIU 880 from its beginnings in 1983 had previously worked for ACORN.⁸ This meant that in its early days, SEIU 880 was less concerned about recognition and collective bargaining rights than building political power to strengthen workers’ voices and improve job quality. The home care workers in the union did not shy away from traditional community organizing methods to collectively exert political influence, while they did not yet have the right to collectively bargain. Illinois organizers view the density of the home care worker population in legislative districts across the state as instrumental to their early success.⁹

Without yet having won union recognition and the right to collectively bargain, the 880 political action committee and other arms of SEIU pushed for Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, to be elected governor. Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) was the only candidate that committed to granting an executive order recognizing the right of independent provider home care workers to have a union and collectively bargain with the state. Illinois had not elected a Democrat in almost 30 years, and Blagojevich was likely to create a better environment for care workers and for organized labor in Illinois. Blagojevich won that election, and in 2003, he became the first U.S. governor to issue an executive order and then sign legislation granting home care workers collective bargaining rights.

Successes/Benefits for Home Care Workers

From its early days in 1985 to 2005, SEIU 880 was able to win 13 pay increases for DORS (Illinois Department of Rehabilitation) independent provider personal assistants through legislative fights that resulted in budget increases to the DORS home care program to fund those pay raises.¹⁰ The union also won a 34 percent wage increase in its first contract with the state of Illinois in 2003.

In 2011, the union successfully won a training fund to support workers’ initial and continuing learning. The classes, which consist of a combination of required and voluntary training, are free and participants often receive stipends. In early 2020, SEIU HCII finalized another collective bargaining cycle with independent provider home care workers through the state’s DORS and Home Services Program that will increase their minimum hourly wage to $17.25 by December 2022,¹¹ as well as additional resources to expand worker training programs through the union’s training fund.

Family Child Care Provider History

The work to unionize child care workers began in the summer of 1996. Following successes in the home care space, SEIU 880 was interested in organizing more low-wage workers. SEIU organizers saw that family child care was a common source of employment in the neighborhoods they served.¹² Several 880 members had family or friends who were family child care providers, and some 880 members had left the home care space to work in child care.¹³ This was also around the time that President Clinton enacted welfare reform, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) work requirements led more parents to go into the labor force and rely on child care providers.

There were numerous similarities between the home care and child care workforces, both in terms of demographics and working conditions. Family child care providers who relied on public subsidies from the state Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) wanted to address two main issues: late payments from the state and the low reimbursement rate for services.¹⁴ In 1999, under pressure from Local 880, Gov. George Ryan (R-Ill.) increased reimbursement rates for licensed child care providers by 50 percent.¹⁵ In 2000, family child care providers ”won an informal grievance system through which child care providers could get their problem with the state addressed more formally.”¹⁶

Family child care providers were officially granted the right to organize and collectively bargain over wages, hours, and working conditions in 2005 when Gov. Blagojevich issued an executive order. Legislation was signed soon after, stating that publicly subsidized family child care providers are state employees for the limited purposes of collective bargaining.¹⁷ According to the legislation, “Any contract negotiated by the providers is both self-executing and enforceable by the right to strike.”¹⁸ Unlike other states, agreements negotiated by the union that require additional funds, like child care subsidy rate increases, do not rely on legislative approval to be implemented.¹⁹

Successes/Benefits for Family Child Care Providers

Relative to other states, the union in Illinois has been successful in securing benefits for family child care providers. The union has negotiated four collective bargaining agreements since achieving recognition.

The first contract in 2006 included a 26 to 30 percent reimbursement rate increase over three years for family child care providers.²⁰ The governor’s budget included funding to cover the first year rate increase.²¹ And while only family child care providers were covered under the contract, the state’s child care advocates successfully used the family child care provider rate increase as leverage to lobby for rate increases for child care centers. The contract also included health insurance in its third year and pay incentives for training. Illinois family child care providers can access health insurance through the SEIU IL Home Care & Child Care Fund. Illinois remains one of the only states to have secured health insurance for this workforce.

In 2009, the union and state agreed to another three-year contract. This contract included a 22 percent rate increase over three and a half years, continued state funding for the labor-management partnership overseeing health insurance, incentives for providers to participate in trainings, and changes to make payment procedures more efficient for providers.²² The training fund is peer-driven, with experienced child care providers leading many of the courses.²³ All of the trainings are free and many offer a stipend for participants. The state requires educators in licensed settings to complete at least 15 contact hours of training per year, and providers can access these trainings for free through SEIU HCII.

From 2015–2019, Gov. Bruce Rauner (R-III.) was hostile to unions. During Rauner’s tenure, the Illinois General Assembly included a rate increase for CCAP child care providers in the budget but he did not implement it. The union sued the state for failure to implement the rate increase to home child care providers. Soon after Gov.Pritzker (D-III.) took office in 2019, he agreed to wage increases for both home care and child care workers and agreed to pay about $44 million in back pay for the time that Rauner had not implemented the rate increase. This impacted 14,000 child care providers.²⁴

Continued Challenges

While not unique to Illinois, the primary challenge for care workers is that there is not enough public investment in the system. Even with increases in reimbursement rates, many home care and child care workers struggle to make ends meet. Providing quality care is expensive, and rate increases rarely translate to family child care providers paying themselves more. Home care workers also have a long way to go before they can reliably earn a living wage. More public funding is needed for reimbursement rates to truly cover the cost of providing high-quality care.

Another challenge is that child care worker reimbursement rates remain at the whims of the governor to some degree, as exemplified above. The state has not consistently elected officials who are friendly to the union or to care work. Illinois child care workers are still fighting for key benefits, particularly a retirement fund, compensation based on years of experience, a pool of substitute educators, and a set “payday” each month where they can reliably expect to receive their reimbursements from the state.²⁵

Care worker organizers in Illinois face tough obstacles, including powerful anti-union political forces in the state legislature and recent Supreme Court decisions that make it harder to build and sustain unions within the fragmented home care and child care sectors. Nevertheless, SEIU HCII has been able to successfully sign up workers as full members and enlist them in the ongoing fight to pass worker-friendly policies at the city, state, and national level.

A basic principle of organizing is that there is power in numbers, and these community organizing tactics lend themselves to more densely populated areas. SEIU 880 pursued organizing in the areas with denser populations where it was easier to more quickly reach more workers in an effort to impact state legislators with a large number of care workers in their district. They started with Chicago, and then opened offices and directed their efforts to other metropolitan areas in the state. State legislative champions can arise when a sufficient number of workers in their district come together. Glassman shared the example of a young state senator, Barack Obama, who sponsored legislation on home care workers in the Illinois Senate and championed this issue. Population density also played a role in California, where both home care and child care organizing efforts began at the county level and grew county by county for many years before there was a successful statewide effort.

The importance of the worksite in this strategy’s effectiveness is especially evident when comparing organizing success of different types of child care workers. While organizing efforts have been most successful among family child care providers, a majority of child care workers work in center-based programs. Like family child care providers, those working in centers receiving subsidies are subject to low reimbursement rates and are usually compensated poorly. Center-based child care teachers are afforded federal protections as traditional employees, but achieving collective bargaining rights has proven more challenging for these workers because the center-based child care industry is less centralized.²⁶ They may receive the same subsidies as family child care providers, but their employer is the center director or owner. When attempting to organize at the individual center level, employees have a traditional employer with whom they can bargain, but their numbers are likely small and high turnover rates make it hard to form a collective bargaining unit. Any gains secured at the center level do not automatically extend to other center-based workers. Having varied employers can make it difficult to organize across worksites when pursuing sector-wide organizing, and the high turnover rate at centers can make it difficult to get enough employees on board.²⁷ By the time organizers get to a vote, a substantial percentage of the workforce has often changed.²⁸ Marcy Whitebook, director emerita of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California-Berkeley, explained, “The center-based teachers are essentially invisible. There's no independent list of them and they're often not certified. … It makes doing research really hard and makes organizing really hard.”