Excerpts from the document:
Despite the vital importance of child care services to the California economy, working families, and the healthy development and school readiness of young children, child care remains a low-wage, high-turnover industry in which less than five percent of the workforce is represented by a union. Yet labor interest in organizing the child care
workforce has grown dramatically in the past several years.
The Labor Project for Working Families convened an expanded group of labor and child care leaders on January 9, 2003, for a day-long conference called "Child Care Organizing: Out of the Box." to encourage collaboration and stimulate new
visions and strategies for child care organizing in California. The goals of the meeting were to engage unions and community-based worker groups in strategic thinking around organizing strategies for child care workers; to agree on a common set of principles; to agree on a plan of action; and to agree on a structure for future work.