Public Employee Press
Day care workers demand
justice Parents,
politicians and pint-sized protesters joined day care workers at a City Hall rally
May 22 to tell the Bloomberg administration, Enough is enough!
Terminations
of 600 members, no contract since the last one expired on March 31, 2006, and
managements failure to comply with a 14-month-old arbitration ruling led
members of District Council 1707s Local 205 to take their protest to the
streets.
Echoing down the concrete canyons of Lower Manhattan, their chants
called on the public to Stand behind our teachers so our children can have
a future. Passersby from Con Edison employees to construction workers
in hard hats and cops in uniform all indicated their support for the cause.
Saving
unionized public day care is everyones concern, said Connie Derr,
acting regional director for AFSCME, the national union of DC 37 and DC 1707.
These people are providing an essential service and the city is disregarding
them.
Members of DC 37 and other unions were there in solidarity
as DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray addressed the throng of protesters: You
are entrusted with the precious lives of our children while you struggle to make
a living. We are with you in your fight! Its time for a contract!
said Gray.
The demand for public day care and the after-school
program grows greater every day. Yet when the city switched the program from the
Administration for Childrens Services to the Dept. of Youth and Community
Development and terminated 600 after-school care employees, thousands of children
lost access.
DC 1707 Executive Director Raglan George
said the citys refusal to negotiate a contract for the 7,000 day care workers
is unacceptable: We are here to say to the city that they cant dismantle
child care and privatize child care. This is what this mayor is doing, and we
want it to stop.
Jane LaTour |