Press Room

When Shift Work is the Norm — An Interview with Jamie Kass
by Elaine Lowe

Night shifts, early morning shifts and off-peak holidays are the norm for postal workers. They might work 20 to 25 years before being eligible for day jobs. By then, their kids are probably long grown and their child care worries history. Child care centres are predominantly open only during daytime hours. This means that many postal workers needs are not being served by existing child care services.

After a major strike in 1981 for paid maternity leave, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) started looking more closely at how to support their members to both work and care for their children. This translated into passing resolutions at their national convention about opposing cut-backs in child care services and supporting a universal child care system as a government responsibility.

With little success at getting government to respond, the Union turned to the bargaining table. In 1987, the union won a joint employer-union child care needs assessment. A survey of 50,000 revealed that members primarily cobbled together care for their children. Very few children were in regulated, licensed care, mostly because of the high cost, but also because it did not meet their needs. Shift workers felt abandoned in their struggle to find care, often perceiving it as their own individual responsibility.

CUPW understood that child care was a collective responsibility and, in 1991, began negotiations for a child care fund. By 1995, the union became one of a very few to have that negotiated a child care fund to assist members in finding and affording high quality child care. Jamie Kass’ union experience and child care background made her an ideal candidate to coordinate the fund. The $2-million fund cannot begin to address all the needs of all the members across the country. Kass quickly saw that any solutions had to be found by working with the existing child care community to expand and enhance services.

An assessment of members’ child care needs identified the most critical issues to be non-traditional hours, the high cost of care (particularly for infants), emergency care, supports for children with special needs and care during summer holidays. Kass targeted these areas, planning to use the CUPW fund to create both new services and new spaces.

Meeting the Needs: Starting with Extended Hours
To begin to address the needs of members working outside of 9 to 5, CUPW developed four initial pilot projects offering extended hour centre-based care in four areas of Canada. Criteria for being chosen to participate in the pilots were:
– facilities that were high quality, non-profit and licensed;
– staff were either unionized or paid at par with the community norm;
– facility was situated close to a major postal outlet; and
– staff were willing to expand their programs.

Funds were used to pay for additional staff and to make such changes as adding lighting, intercom and video systems for safety, or purchasing equipment and toys that reflected a more diverse age group. Postal workers were offered 35-45 per cent subsidy for their child to attend.

Yet even with expanded services and subsidies offered at the four pilot centres, only two of the original pilots remain in existence today. Kass explains: “In some parts of Canada, child care is still not seen as high quality. In Alberta, for instance, the reputation of for-profit care as poor quality made it difficult to get CUPW parents to even try the extended hour program.”

She added, “and when it comes to quality child care, parents are looking for consistency: “pilot” projects have temporary written all over them and parents were not willing to risk disrupting their children unnecessarily. Other parents prefer to have care of whatever quality, as long as children do not have to be moved to and from their own beds during the night. For others that was a small price to pay for the stability of a good environment.” These lessons were all valuable for Kass and helped the union assess its future programs.

The CUPW Child Care Fund Today
In 2000, the CUPW fund supports 11 projects across Canada. In Newfoundland, the fund has been used to develop a family resource centre that offers family child care, training and supports to caregivers including a toy lending library along with child care information and community referral, and drop-in play groups for parents and caregivers. In Quebec, CUPW works with a community based agency to allow early morning or night workers to leave their sleeping children in their own beds under the supervision of a caregiver employed and supported by the agency. In Halifax, CUPW created an affordable summer camp program, and in Ottawa, the union supports and fully subsidizes a short term emergency care program for its members.

Kass is enthusiastic talking about some of the real gains from these projects. “For me”, she says, “its all about pushing the envelope. In the past year, the Newfoundland government funded the CUPW Family Resource Centre to develop and provide regulated family day care (a first for the province) in the St. John’s community. And the Quebec government just chose our home-based project as one of their flexible model pilot projects. This means that not only do our members gain; so do all families.”

Special Needs
However, the most important use of this fund has been the union’s Special Needs Project, a program to support parents of children with special needs. In 1995, the union started with a research project of close to 80 members. The goal was to look at the additional barriers postal workers faced trying to remain employed while parenting a child with a disability or special need. The union asked SpeciaLink, a Cape Breton based research and advocacy voice for inclusive services, to coordinate the research. “The results were a real eye-opener for the union”, Kass said. “Parents reported high levels of stress and exhaustion, limited child care services or appropriate programs, special transportation needs, greater needs for time off for appointments and emergencies, and often less money since one parent was forced to stay home either full or part time.”

“We knew we had to do something right away; our members needed support and recognition.” At the time of our interview, the Special Needs project had expanded to 345 members with 404 children who have special needs in 72 locals from every province. Administered by SpeciaLink, the project helps families address their child care needs with individualized funding, resources and information and a newsletter that encourages members to share ideas and strategies. SpeciaLink’s 30-member team of special needs advisors interviews parents three times per year about how their children are doing.

Parents have used the funding in incredibly supportive and creative ways. For example, a severely diabetic child wanted to attend a soccer camp but the camp refused claiming the risks were too high. Using the CUPW fund, the family gained permission to hire a teenager (with diabetes) to go with her child to soccer camp. So her son had an excellent role model, his mother did not have to worry about his shots; and the entire team had an extra coach. The next summer the teenager was hired as a camp counselor and the camp opened its doors to children with diabetes. The process meant much more than making a special summer for a child; it changed public perceptions about diabetes.

A Unique ApproachCUPW’s approach to child care is unique; it recognizes and supports the needs of its members — who are both workers and parents — by working in partnership with the child care community. More importantly, it demonstrates that we have a collective responsibility supporting parents in their search for quality care and pushing governments to provide both leadership and funding to achieve our goals.

Through the child care fund, the union will never have enough money to assist all of its members in meeting their child care needs. But as Kass says, “It can push the envelope and demonstrate innovative and effective child care solutions to government, to other unions, and to its members. Once parents try regulated child care and learn about its benefits, they often become advocates.”

Can you really make postal workers into effective advocates? As one member left CUPW’s five-day education programme, Child Care Now, he said, “I came here thinking that tax breaks for people to stay at home was the best way to deal with this problem. I now see that good, affordable, flexible child care could be better for early child development than I ever knew.”

Jamie Kass has been active in the child care sector for over 25 years, as a early childhood educator, child care advocate and trade unionist. She is the national coordinator of the CUPW Child Care Fund and represents the Canadian Labour Congress on the newly formed Child Care Human Resources Round Table.