Child Care Equity at UBC Child Care

Ubyssey: Union members gather to rally around child care equity issues (April 27, 2012)

Over half of UBC’s childcare workers are forming a new Childcare Equity Caucus.

Early childhood educators at UBC are members of the British Columbia Government and Service Employees Union (BCGEU) Local 303. The equity caucus is a grassroots movement from within the union, consisting of 90 of the union’s 150 members. The caucus will begin to establish its plan, to see that UBC childcare workers receive more “equitable” wages, at their first meeting on May 1.

“The real issue is childcare equity, and our goal is to have other union members talk about what the union does on our behalf,” said Tom Kertes, a key organizer for the caucus. Kertes is a UBC early childhood educator and founder of the Liberation Learning Project, a BC-wide network of child care workers.

Kertes is dissatisfied with the wages currently paid to UBC child care workers. He would like to see UBC childcare workers receive more “equitable” wages, without raising fees or reducing childcare spaces. UBC child care workers are currently paid between $17 and $21, depending on their levels of education. Kertes was not willing to say what he considered to be an equitable wage before the caucus meeting took place.

While the caucus is a grassroots movement, its goals can only be accomplished by the union as a whole, through collective bargaining. “Everything is going to work within the union, so obviously, the union is our sole bargaining agent,” said Kertes.

Immigrating to Canada

Toronto Star: More Americans Heading North (August 6, 2007)

For 34-year-old labour organizer Tom Kertes, the move last April from Seattle, Wash., to Toronto was based on human rights.

“The words `human rights’ are foreign words in the U.S.,” Kertes said. “They only apply to other countries.”

He moved to Toronto with his partner Ron Braun and the two plan to marry, something they could not do in Washington state.

He also cited the war in Iraq and the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans – and the failure of the Bush administration to clearly disavow such practice – as contributing factors to what is a major decision.

“Moving countries is not done lightly,” he says. He said he found the tolerance of Toronto welcoming and he thought Canadians were proud of their reputation for tolerance.

Seattle Times: Expatriates look fondly on U.S. but aren’t coming back (November 11, 2008)

They are the ones who actually did it. Of all the people who said during the past eight years that they’d had it with the United States, that they were leaving the country, these are the ones who really did move to Canada. But last week, after they’d settled into new lives across the border, they watched on television as the country they left seemed to change with Barack Obama’s election.

Tom Kertes, 35, felt homesick as he watched the [election eve] partying on Seattle’s streets from Toronto. He and his partner left Capitol Hill two years ago, largely because of anti-gay politics in the United States. But a sliver of regret arose as he watched.

“One thing that has been hard for me is feeling like I am missing out on [the historic election of Barack Obama] by living outside of the States. And part of me feels a little guilty for not being part of the [presidential] election in a more direct way,” he said last week. “Then I start to feel disconnected from my life here in Canada.”

Living abroad, even as close as Canada, he got the same pangs he gets on the Fourth of July, “when I put out an American flag on our window, I just feel a little less homesick,” he said. “And it’s not like I ever was a ‘rah, rah’ patriotic American back home.”

But then as he kept watching the results last Tuesday, California voters passed Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages. And, he thought, maybe America hadn’t changed that much.

He’d left amid the debate in the U.S. over same-sex marriage. “I got tired of feeling like a political football,” he said. In Canada, which allows gay marriage, he’ll marry his 41-year-old partner, Ron Braun, in May. He won’t be coming home, Kertes said.

Advocating for Living Wages and Human Rights

Free Speech Radio News Coverage of the Human Rights Zone March (April 20, 2009)

Labor Notes (article that I wrote): Tourist District Shouldn’t Grow on Poverty Jobs (March 12, 2010)

Baltimore needs a jolt. Poverty conditions for workers in the city’s Inner Harbor, a premier tourist and entertainment district, are threatening to become routine. Workers relate stories of poverty wages, sexual harassment, uncertain scheduling, inadequate health care, barriers to education, and unreasonable hours.

“Just because these are ordinary practices doesn’t make them tolerable,” said Luis Larin, an organizer with United Workers, a worker center founded in 2002 by homeless day laborers. It is intent on turning the retail zone, home to 1,000 service workers, into a “human rights zone.”

United Workers’ strategy is to target the developers who control the Inner Harbor, pursuing a legally binding agreement with each one. The agreements will mandate, through the leases between the developers and their vendors, that all employers at the property pay at least the Maryland state living wage—$12.25—and treat workers with respect.

Baltimore Sun: Workers Unite for Human Rights [PDF] (October 26, 2008)

The Inner Harbor laborers, who work in restaurants and janitorial services, were joined by United Workers Association members from Camden Yards who successfully waged a three-year battle for better wages and working conditions.

Last year, the Maryland Stadium Authority agreed to pay workers – who were making $7 an hour to pick up trash at Camden Yards – the state’s new $11.30-an-hour “living wage,” beginning last spring.

“Workers have identified the same issues that were found at Camden Yards as being present in the Inner Harbor, so we are transferring our efforts from Camden Yards to here, and we hope to be victorious,” said Tom Kertes, a UWA leadership organizer.

“We’re putting the Inner Harbor on notice. Workers here are demanding that we start the process, and employers have a responsibility to their workers,” he said. “And on April 18, 2009, we are going to publicly identify the worst offender.”

Kertes said the UWA has yet to speak with business operators in the Inner Harbor, but, he said, “We will be doing that very soon.”

Kertes said that the UWA is not a union and does not engage in collective bargaining. “We believe instead in moral outrage,” he said. “Every low-wage worker is entitled to the same longtime respect other workers are given.”

Baltimore Sun: Maryland agency approves $11.30 ‘living wage’ next year [PDF] (September 7, 2007)

Under pressure to raise wages for part-time janitorial workers at Camden Yards, the Maryland Stadium Authority voted yesterday to pay them the state’s new $11.30-an-hour “living wage,” starting next spring.

The 5-2 decision came after the men and women who clean the state-owned Orioles and Ravens stadiums on game days postponed a hunger strike this week to give the agency time to come up with a binding living-wage agreement.

The hunger strike, which was to have started Monday, was called off yesterday.

Members and leaders of the United Workers Association, a human rights organization founded by homeless day laborers in Baltimore, called the stadium authority’s vote a victory after three years of trying to obtain higher wages and better working conditions at the stadiums.

Baltimore Sun: Poorer City Residents Pay More for Goods (July 19, 2006)

Tom Kertes, spokesman for the United Workers Association, which represents low-wage workers said he welcomed any attention to poverty but added the study’s conclusions are “not news to us.”"We call it the ghetto tax,” he said.

Baltimore City Paper: “Unite and Conquer – Brief Notes on a Project For a Revolution In Baltimore (Exploring the Contemporary Museum’s Ambitious Current Exhibition)” (July 7, 2006)

Not all the activist groups initially understood why they were being asked to participate [in the Contemporary Museum's exhibition]. “I was very, very skeptical at first,” says Tom Kertes, communications organizer for United Workers Association, a coalition of low-wage laborers.

Kertes splits his time between Seattle and Baltimore, where he helps UWA fight Peter Angelos and the Maryland Stadium Authority to raise the Camden Yards cleaning crew pay from $7.50 an hour to the city’s living-wage minimum of $9.08. “I had no idea what to expect or even why we were being invited. I went into it the first time and thought, ‘Look, we’ll work with you and you can be artists. You’re artists, and if you want to make stuff, there is stuff we need made.’ And they kept saying, ‘Great, we’ll make it, but that’s not what we want to do.’ And we’re like, ‘OK, then what do you want to do?’ And what they wanted to do was be a part of social justice.”

Kertes remembers the first few meetings, where the activists seized the opportunity to talk to each other as the artists and curators sat there and listened. And then they started tailoring the show to fit the activists’ needs. “We would go to these dinners and we’d just spend two hours talking,” Kertes says. “And when it was over we’d look at Cira and everybody apologized, thinking we hadn’t talked about the show. And she would say, ‘No, you’re doing what we wanted you to do.’”