Childcare staff at universities sick of lay-offs

Press, 3 December 1987, Page 37

Childcare staff at universities sick of lay-offs

PA Wellington Staff in university childcare centres say they are sick of being laid off at the end of each academic year and rehired at the start of the next. The childcare workers say they want permanent status, recognition that they are doing a highstress job, and pay parity with kindergarten teachers. The Early Childhood Workers’ Union begins negotiating their pay and working conditions this month. The union covers about 40 people employed in childcare centres at Auckland, Victoria and Canterbury universities. It has another 3000 working in the private sector. Talks on the university pay agreement were to have begun on Thursday but they have been deferred till later this month.

One of the first things the union wants changed is the perception of university childcare workers as “casuals,” which allows them to be technically laid off at the end of each year.

The national secretary of the union, Ms Helen Baxter said that this made staff feel unsettled in their job's, and it did not

help universities facing serious recruitment and retention problems. She said the union wanted service increments inserted into the pay agreement to recognise the length and quality of childcare training. It was also pushing for pay parity between the university staff and kindergarten teachers. The two groups did the same work but kindergarten teachers earned 14c an hour more. The claims already have the backing of at least one group of parents. The parents of children at Victoria- University’s childcare centre said In a statement that they were worried about the high staff turnover at the centre, and they believed the staff should be paid more. “I think children are worth more than a gin and tonic — yet workers are so badly underpaid that one left to work in a bar to make enough money to get by," they said.

“Childcare workers get a good training but we pay them shabbily.” Ms Baxter said the private sector childcare awards would be negotiated in March.