What does a $7 per hour child care teacher, and a $16 per hour software tester have in common? Answer: they are both sick and tired of conditions in their workplaces, and are organizing to do something about them. At least in Washington state, that is, where two local efforts, spearheaded not by unions but by workers, are partnering with organized labor to give voice to the unorganized in both the high technology and the child care industries.

Both of these new organizations - the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech) and the Childcare Union Project (CUP) - are developing forms of worker association that will lobby for better working conditions before both employers and the legislature, and educate the public around their workplace issues. If successful, these groups may help pave the way for a new wave of innovation in labor organizing

These two efforts originate from groups of workers positioned very differently in the economy. High tech workers are frequently well-paid, but often face months or even years as temps without job security, health benefits, or other rights accorded permanent workers.

While technical workers fight for their rights for job security and equal treatment, Washington's child care workers are struggling for an even more basic goal: enough money to pay the bills, avoid eviction, and purchase minimal health care. Although armed with AA's and BA's, most childcare workers make less than a burger flipper at Dick's drive-in. The resulting crunch on workers' living standards has produced an extremely high staff turnover detrimental to both workers and the children in their care.

The Childcare Union Project aims to change that. A partnership between Seattle's Worthy Wages Task Force and the Service Employee's International Union (SEIU) District 925, (successor to the innovative Nine-to-Five) and with three paid organizers, the campaign aims to sign up the majority of workers in a number of King County child care centers over the course of the next year.

Workers from all of the centers will then meet jointly to design a master agreement covering pay, working conditions, and benefit standards. According to organizer Barb Wiley, workers will then petition to have union elections. The master agreement will provide general guidelines for the terms set with each center or home-based provider, and may benefit both workers and owners by making possible the group purchasing of health and other benefits.

The campaign is the outgrowth of years of hard labor by Seattle's Worthy Wages Task force, which paved the way for the campaign with its steady efforts to educate the public about the conditions facing those who work with our youngest children. At a January 1998 meeting of the Task Force attended by 46 child care teachers and a number of center directors, it was decided that taking the next step toward organizing was necessary.

The formal kickoff occurred on Worthy Wages day on May 1, the annual rally sponsored by the Task Force. Decisions along the way in the campaign will be made jointly by workers, activists, and organizers. Worthy Wage activist Rebecca Adrian notes that while "Most employees in child care are not in it for the money," without better pay and working conditions many workers will not be able to stay in the profession at all.

Fighting The High-Tech Workplace Blues
Recent events, including the elimination of required overtime pay in Washington state for some technical workers, proved instrumental in catalyzing the formation of WashTech. The Software Industry's successful effort to eliminate mandatory overtime produced an outpouring of letters to the Department of Labor and Industries, with less than 25 out of approximately 750 letter writers supporting the change.

Recent comments by Microsoft Chairman Bill that the U.S. should lower the industry's wage bill by easing immigration limits on highly-skilled foreign workers have also raised worker's ire, as have an accretion of legal rulings exposing the industry's manipulation of the temporary worker industry to avoid creating job positions with any real security.

WashTech has gained in-kind assistance from the Communication Workers of America, the King County Labor Council, and also from the National Writers Union. According to WashTech organizers, the nascent organization will serve as a power base and a statewide voice for high tech workers. In addition to advocating on behalf of employees in highly technical positions, such as software testers and developers, WashTech seeks to represent writers, web designers, and others involved in the rapidly expanding "content" side of the business.

Both of these campaigns are squeezed by constraints that need to be overcome. In child care, the necessity of raising wages runs into the U.S.'s (and Washington's) lack of commitment to adequate funding for childcare.

In the case of technical workers, the money is there, but the unionist's watchword - solidarity - may not be. WashTech has the critical task of convincing a large and growing group of workers, some very well-paid and some not, that they have common interests. Will workers go it alone, in the hopes of cashing in big in the software industry's gravy train? Or will they see their interests as being eroded by managers and owners whose commitment to workers has been selective at best?

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Contents this page were published in the May/June, 1998 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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