More than 500 childcarers have joined the Transport and General Workers' Union in Scotland over the past two years, with some new members securing pay rises of as much as 13 per cent as a result.
The T&GWU launched a campaign in November 1999 to raise the status of childcare in Britain and Ireland and recruit new members, and has been particularly successful in Scotland. Childcare officer Margaret Ann Jones, who is based in Glasgow, said, 'We have new members who work in both local authority and private nurseries and out-of-school care, and the numbers are increasing all the time.'
She cited Summerston After-School Care, a Glasgow out-of-school club run on a voluntary basis and attached to a primary school, as a recent example of the benefits membership could bring. 'The staff at Summerston didn't know any of their working rights. We negotiated a 13 per cent pay rise for them, from 4.64 to 5.25 an hour, and also increased their holiday entitlement by two days a year,' said Ms Jones. The Summerston members also plan to enter the union's stakeholder pension scheme.
The union has found that after-school clubs are often run by management committees made up mostly of parents whose children are cared for at the club and who are not familiar with employment law. Many try to avoid holiday pay by saying their staff are employed on six-week, term-time contracts.
At Currie After-School Club in Edinburgh, the T&GWU found that workers were not aware of their rights to paid holidays, rest periods and trade union membership, which would allow them to be represented in grievances and disciplinary procedures.
Ms Jones said, 'One of the first achievements was the implementation of paid holidays and rest breaks in line with health and safety legislation. We then turned our attention to the pay scales, which were low.
'The difficulty was that this had to be financed by increasing the childcare fees - remember that everyone on the club's management committee has children attending, and therefore has a vested interest in keeping the fees to a minimum. When we presented our case and explained our reasoning we managed, through negotiations, to increase their hourly rate substantially to 5 an hour.'
However, she said she felt the union had only 'scratched the surface' in raising the profile of the profession. 'In the main, childcare workers are young and predominantly female. They work in an industry which we have found to be under-represented in terms of trade union membership as well as being an unrecognised body of professional people. Although in most cases, individuals spend many years training and gaining qualifications, they end up being the unsung heroes who care for the country's most precious asset - its children.'
In March 2000, Nursery World Scotland reported how the T&GWU had recruited more than 100 new members in Scotland since the launch of the childcare campaign, and had negotiated recognition agreements with six out-of-school clubs in Edinburgh.
The T&GWU's eight-point Charter for Childcare, published to mark the start of the campaign, calls for fair pay and for training and development to recognised standards. It also demands fair conditions, including job security, decent working hours, holidays, breaks, sick leave and pension arrangements. The charter is backed by childcare organisations such as the Daycare Trust.
Launching the campaign, T&GWU national organiser Diana Holland said, 'Childcare provision has grown tremendously over the the past couple of years. With our campaign, featuring the Charter for Childcare, we want to ensure we reach all parts of the UK and Ireland where there are people working to care for children in the public, private and voluntary sectors.'
