By James Parrott
This report examines the progress achieved with New York City’s July 2019 commitment to early childhood education (ECE) starting pay salary parity that will raise pay for certified teachers in community-based organizations (CBOs) by 30-40 percent by October 1, 2021.
The context for these salary parity gains include: the transition of ECE contracts from the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to the Department of Education (DOE); the sector-City interactions that shaped the next generation of ECE contracts; and the significant transition for the union representing over 7,000 ECE teaching and support staff, as that union, AFSCME District Council 1707, was recently combined with AFSCME District Council 37.
Salary parity for ECE teachers working in CBOs became a front-burner issue in the spring of 2014 when New York City began to implement full-day universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) in the early months of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. More than half of all children in UPK classrooms in early 2014 were in CBOs and that proportionate reliance would continue as full-day pre-kindergarten was extended to all four-year-olds over the next year-and-a-half.
Extensive campaign mobilization in 2019 together with an energized and transformed union, and with the eventual support of the mayor and the City Council, resulted in a critical budget agreement and success at the bargaining table in reaching an historic salary parity agreement. Nonprofits in the ECE sector had never before been so well-organized and the considerable political clout and bargaining acumen of DC 37 had not previously been focused on the ECE sector.
While much was achieved by the sector in 2019, three big challenges lie ahead: comprehensive salary parity; enhanced career ladder and advancement opportunities; and higher-quality family child care programs for children under age 3 along with better compensation for providers.
Progress on these ECE challenges will require both continued unity across the nonprofit sector, along with the greater political clout that could come from expanded unionization within the ECE sector. The main issues within the sector regarding unionization are not now primarily about salaries, but about management issues, job security, and health and retirement benefits.
The challenge facing the broader human services sector is different but not less compelling than in the ECE sector. City-funded human services typically support low-income households and people in need, those with special service needs, and specific vulnerable populations. The need for all those services is well-established and there is an argument for delivering high-quality services, for fairly compensating the nonprofit workers providing those services, for providing a pay ladder for them to advance upward, and for supports for their acquiring more education and skills. And as in the case of the ECE sector, the human service sector’s ability to make the case for better compensation and opportunities would be enhanced with a politically strong union ally able to effectively mobilize the workforce in communities throughout the city, and one with a track record of supporting their membership in attaining additional education and skills to advance within their respective fields.