A New Contract and a New Kind of Steward

More than two years ago CWA Local 1037 began organizing thousands of home child care workers in New Jersey. The drive started much the way it has in other states—but ended in a victory for new kind of home care workers union that focuses on building active members. Photo: CWA Local 1037.

More than two years ago, the Communications Workers (CWA), told New Jersey CWA locals that the union was beginning an organizing drive for the state’s 12,000 home childcare workers. The plan was to get assistance from ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) community organizers and knock on 12,000 doors.

The childcare workers were registered with the state to care for the children of families receiving subsidized childcare (mostly through Welfare to Work) and were considered to be independent contractors.

Organizing them involved visiting houses, identifying active workers, signing them up, and getting recognition from the state through an executive order. It was a tall order, and CWA locals were asked to lend assistance if they could.

The drive started much as it has in other states, but ended in a victory for a new kind of home care workers union that focuses on building active members. Local 1037 at first had no intention of becoming the childcare local for the state. The local was busy with other organizing, and agreed only to assist in the drive on an ad-hoc basis and to send out its organizers and stewards to knock on doors in a few counties.

Within a few weeks, however, the local built strong relationships with workers and felt that this new kind of organizing needed to be integrated with CWA’s worksite philosophy.

CONTRACTORS TO STEWARDS

Local 1037 leaders didn’t like the idea of contracting out organizing or organizing any workers without a real organizing committee. Research into how these units were organized elsewhere led the local to fear that the union was functioning like a customer service agency and relating to workers through the telephone.

Local 1037 now shares a bargaining unit of more than 6,000 home childcare workers with American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 1. The first contract was ratified November 17.

Stewards are the heart and soul of all of the work that Local 1037 does in its units. Stewards engage in contract enforcement, mobilization, organizing, political activity, community services, training, lobbying, and more.

If Local 1037 was going organize childcare workers, then childcare workers were going to become active and involved members of the union. They were going to define their own issues, and direct the campaign and contract negotiations.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

But how do you organize thousands of independent contractors working in their homes throughout the state into a union? The local first turned to a cadre of stewards who attended the local’s own Shop Stewards Organizing Institute, two-day overnight trainings that prepare stewards to be involved in new member organizing.

During the training stewards learn how to engage in a member contact, talk about the union at their worksite, and express a vision of organizing that comes from their own experience.

Several Local 1037 stewards worked on the childcare drive and served on the organizing committee with childcare workers themselves. They visited houses and called other childcare workers, helping to collect more than 4,000 cards the union eventually submitted.

WINNING A CONTRACT

On August 2, 2006, Governor Jon Corzine signed an executive order recognizing both CWA and AFSCME as the “Child Care Workers Union.” Now it was time for those leaders to become stewards. Local 1037 modified its structure. Instead of having worksite shop stewards, organizing committee members became “neighborhood shop stewards,” new member-leaders who could represent other childcare workers in their communities. Neighborhood stewards helped get bargaining surveys filled out, car-pooled childcare workers to meetings to elect a bargaining committee, and finally helped to turn out workers to ratify the contract.

Under the new contract, childcare workers are paid through vouchers that parents are given to subsidize their childcare. The union was able to increase the subsidy amounts by 25 percent in less than two years. Parents will now get seniority lists when they select a childcare worker, so they will know who is experienced and who just started. A new grievance procedure now also provides for arbitration of disputes.

FORGING NEW LEADERS

Local 1037 leaders don’t entirely know how the new steward system will work out in the end. In some neighborhoods there are dozens of childcare workers and in others there are only a few. But Local 1037 believes that its greatest strength is its structure, which permits the struggle for power to emanate from the workplace, led by a worksite leader.

If the labor movement is going to engage in new forms of organizing, it needs to not lose this critical level of union activism.

Nancy Jimenez, a childcare steward in Newark, said the collective approach to problem-solving transformed her work. “I was a little skeptical at first,” she said. “I thought the union was going to be one person coming in to take over. But we are this union.”