With so much happening in the world, we are excited by the passage of the Labor Standards Board policy by the Minneapolis City Council. It will bring together workers, community stakeholders, and businesses to help address industry specific challenges, and ensure Minneapolis is a leader in bringing everyone to the table to find real solutions.
This policy — authored by Councilmembers Chugtai, Chowdry and Cashman — has our full support because we know challenges are often industry specific. In our industry, child care, the status quo isn’t working for most of us and we need it to change. As a childc are provider, a child care teacher, and a parent, we represent exactly the stakeholders the policy will empower to make recommendations on how to help our industry thrive. In our polarized times, this idea is as common sense as you can get.
The sectoral boards under the Labor Standards board will be tripartite — made up of employers, employees, and community stakeholders. That’s us! While we believe this is long overdue, we are excited to see it finally happening and ready to pull our seats up to the table and do the work that centers our children and their families, and those who care for them.
We all want the same thing: high quality child care that kids deserve and that we know makes an impact. Children’s brains grow to 80% of their adult size by age 3. Early learning is critical and it happens in high quality childcare programs every day.
But it doesn’t happen as easily as it should. Child care costs are unaffordable for families, costing more than college tuition. Child care teachers do not earn the wages they need and deserve or have access to benefits like health care or retirement. Child care providers are constantly trying to keep costs as low as they can for families while making payroll. The reality is our child care system is broken.
Too often we leave decisions on how to fix critical issues to people who have no direct connection to the issue. When thinking about the challenges facing our industry, who better than child care providers, teachers and parents to work on solutions to this broken system together? No one.
Decisions should be made by those most affected, which is why we support the Labor Standards Board resolution. It will give us a true process to make recommendations to the City Council so we can see real action on these issues.
Mayor Jacob Frey should support this policy. He has said that the sectoral boards should be made up of only workers and employers, and not community stakeholders. Creating boards of only workers and employers pits them against each other. It’s why the third group of community stakeholders is a critical part of the sectoral board. Child care is the perfect example, with parents being the natural community stakeholders, but it holds for other industries as well.
Shouldn’t tenants and residents have a voice at the table with building owners and those workers who keep their buildings clean and maintained? Yes, they should. Janitors have already raised ideas about how to make buildings more green and energy efficient in previous negotiations with their employers. It makes sense to include building tenants (both people and companies) and environmental experts in a sectoral board that develops proposals on how to provide good jobs in climate friendly buildings.
The Labor Standards Board resolution is democracy at work. It is people coming together to offer ideas and solutions to challenges that affect all of them, and in turn, all of us.
Every single one of us relies on child care, whether we have children or grandchildren in child care or not. Child care ensures that people that serve our community every day can go to work — nurses, grocery store workers, plumbers, and firefighters. The City Council passed the Labor Standards Board resolution and it is time for the mayor to sign it so we can get to work making sure our city is a leader in showcasing how to rise above the political divides and get things done for our families and community!