Katherine Whitty
Why we're angry
We are 65,000 child-care workers professionally caring for you and your 450,000 children for any of many reasons, all of them justified and none more than the others.
I am fortunate enough to work in a type of care referred to as occasional care. It's a bit of a misnomer, as there is nothing occasional about the way our service operates or the frequency with which parents use us. We provide regular and consistent care and education for the children of women in shift work who need to sleep during the day, women who may work in or from home and need precious child-free time, women whose part-time paid work will not allow them to secure a place in long day care and women who seek to care for themselves through leisure or recreational pursuits.
It is our belief that you are rightfully entitled to these services, delivered at the highest possible standard and for the lowest possible cost. And we are all aware of the difficulties you face when choosing and eventually settling your children into care. It's written on your faces when you leave and come to collect your children, the expressions of anxiety and joy when you learn of your child's daily experiences.
But how many of you would be surprised if I said we are in fact an angry mob of oppressed and exploited workers whose meagre wages are paving your way to employment glory? The brave amongst you have probably confronted us with heartfelt wishes of "you're a saint ... I could never do it, so thanks a heap and we'll be back for more of the same tomorrow." Let me tell you why we're angry.
The turnover rate of staff in this industry is double most, and it is our colleagues and your children who suffer this untold loss.
The pay requires most of us to seek a second job to make ends meet and regain a modicum of social dignity. It costs you as much to sink a couple of drinks or park a car in your average CBD for the day as it does for you to hand us the responsibility of your child's healthy development for the afternoon. The forced suppression of our wages with the low fees you pay allows you to play grown-ups in the employment marketplace while it gives your employers the excuse to baulk at our reasonable wage claims. It's not surprising then that any pay rise we have secured through the now historic Accord has been the only excuse employers have found to raise fees.
We are expected to resource and maintain environments 10 times the size and complexity of your average office space, with little or no time to prepare and organise these places of learning, or even plan alongside colleagues.
And we too work eight hour shifts filled with intensive human interaction, broken only by short and staggered breaks that make it virtually impossible for us to network and organise effectively with our colleagues, even if we had the leftover energy to do so.
So I am asking you sisters, are we not also entitled to the status that paid work brings — recognition for a labour that has been undervalued since the dim dawn of patriarchy? The oppression that women as mothers have faced for centuries is alive and kicking in this industry. And your respectful silence and heartfelt gratitude are getting us nowhere.
Put simply, child-care fees have yet to reflect the real value of our work. And whilst our economy hinges on the strength and contributions you make in your working lives, it looks as if child-care workers are going to have to strike for a balance in ours!
[This is an abridged version of a speech given to a trade union women's speak-out in Canberra on March 7 to mark International Women's Day.]