Metro Toronto Daycare Workers Local - CUPE 2484
Organization profile published 1981

Publisher:  c/o Penny Nollgordon, 39 Carr Street, Toronto, Ontario.
Year Published:  1981
Resource Type:  Organization
Cx Number:  CX2359

The vast majority of daycare workers in Canada are unorganized.

Abstract: 
This abstract was published in Connexions Digest in 1981 and 1982:

The vast majority of daycare workers in Canada are unorganized. Many of them earn very low wages. Non-unionized daycare workers in Metro Toronto make $87 000 annually (on the average). Some Toronto daycare workers have joined a new daycare workers local, CUPE 2484. The goals of the union are to negotiate a contract that will improve working conditions, salaries and benefits for daycare workers and to therefore encourage workers to remain in the field. They hope to organize the majority of daycare workers in Toronto and to provide support to other centres across Ontario that want to unionize; they are also committed to working toward free universal daycare.

These workers feel that existing daycare services are available because daycare workers have been willing to accept poverty-level wages. The union is therefore working with parents and sympathetic boards to pressure the government to provide adequate funding for quality daycare. In Ottawa, parents, boards and workers successfully fought to obtain increased funding from the municipality and the province. In Toronto, active daycare workers and parents are now launching a campaign to demand a direct grant of $5 per day per child (subsidized and non-subsidized) to provide additional funds to increase wages of daycare workers.

At CUPE's (Canadian Union of Public Employees) recent annual convention in Winnipeg (October, 1981), two resolutions were passed that relate specifically to daycare. Copies of these resolutions are available from the above address.


This organization no longer exists.